[HN Gopher] Show HN: Odin - the integration of LLMs with Obsidia...
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Show HN: Odin - the integration of LLMs with Obsidian note taking
Author : AlexIchenskiy
Score : 123 points
Date : 2023-09-21 13:18 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| "Generate questions: Extract thought-provoking questions from
| your markdown files, encouraging deeper contemplation and
| critical thinking."
|
| Yeah... I don't think we need more self congratulating note
| taking questions /s
| AlexIchenskiy wrote:
| Lately, my colleagues and I have noticed how difficult it is
| becoming to organize and structure our thoughts, ideas, and
| notes. As budding engineers and full-fledged graph enthusiasts,
| we decided to approach this problem in our style - we began to
| study, research and look for different tools that could help us
| automate and improve these processes. In the process of
| brainstorming and research, we have read quite a lot of
| scientific papers devoted to the concept of knowledge graphs. We
| found many of these works and other materials with the help of
| LLM and we came up with the idea of trying to combine these two
| technologies in one project that was supposed to help us with the
| most difficult thing - organizing yourself. Of course, besides
| this, we came up with many more ideas, some of which we had to
| shelve with great regret, and some we even managed to implement
| in our other projects.
|
| Given that my colleague already had a wealth of experience using
| Obsidian and I made some contributions to LangChain, a very nice
| open-source Python framework for LLM communication, we decided to
| unite forces - I always enjoyed creating rich user interfaces
| while my colleague, Patrik, dealt with the part of the project
| that my UI needed to render. This is how our work on ODIN began,
| but what is Obsidian, how did a god from Norse mythology get in
| here, and why is TypeScript great? Let's find out.
|
| Although I didn't have such extensive experience working with
| Obsidian, I fell in love with it at first sight - a pragmatic and
| user-friendly interface, nice colors, a wide and very open open-
| source community and other goodies - what else does a good note-
| taking application need? With these thoughts in mind, I began to
| study how Obsidian works from the inside, how it can be expanded,
| and how it can be connected to other technologies - such as
| LangChain, in our case.
|
| I was very pleasantly surprised when I discovered a well-made
| Developer API that allows you to create your custom community
| plugins that can easily connect to the application itself. I was
| even more pleasantly surprised when I discovered that all this is
| web-based and has support for React, which I worked with, and
| Svelte for its fans. Although the official documentation is not
| too full of details and sometimes you can get lost in it, a very
| convenient UI styling system and strict TypeScript type
| definitions, coupled with IntelliSense, which I always use, is a
| game-changer.
|
| What's notable is the ease of creating plugins in real time; npm
| scripts allow you to instantly detect code changes, and the
| Obsidian Hot Reload plugin speeds up development several times.
| In addition, Obsidian provides developer tools like popular
| browsers, simplifying the debugging process by accessing the
| console and directly inspecting elements on the screen. This
| flexibility in the Obsidian API allows developers to bring their
| creativity to life, unlocking the full potential of Obsidian to
| create unique note-taking experiences and more. Honestly, it
| feels just like making a web application in a modern and robust
| environment. I'll miss this when I get back to regular web
| development.
|
| That's all great, but still, why ODIN? Honestly, it's quite
| simple -- we liked the project naming style that has existed in
| Memgraph for a long time -- for example, MAGE, also known as
| Memgraph Advanced Graph Extension, seemed to us a damn original
| name, sharp as volcanic glass -- and so, ODIN was born, from now
| onwards known as Obsidian Driven Information Network, an Obsidian
| plugin for knowledge management. This name became the real
| starting point of our project, representing the goal that we were
| trying to comprehend and the idea that we were trying to realize.
|
| In our R&D process, while working on ODIN, we figured out that
| data storage is the core of the app's architecture, without which
| neither the backend nor the frontend would make any sense. Even
| though we thought a lot about traditional databases such as
| PostgreSQL, the Obsidian knowledge graph was the main inspiration
| to try Memgraph, a graph database that excels in modeling complex
| relationships and connections, making it the ideal choice for
| creating and navigating intricate information networks.
|
| Even I, an ordinary student with a passion for developing user
| interfaces, was able to play around with both Memgraph and the
| query language called Cypher. I highly recommend trying the
| visualization that Memgraph Lab provides, even if you are far
| from both database graphs and software development in general.
|
| By seamless integration with LangChain, we've tried to leverage
| Memgraph's speed and efficiency to transform standard notes into
| interconnected knowledge graphs empowered by the flexibility of
| embedding search. This enables you not only to traverse your
| notes effortlessly but also to extract valuable insights by
| interacting with LLMs through LangChain implemented in the
| backend using Python and FastAPI. With Memgraph as our data
| storage solution, ODIN redefines the way we store and harness
| knowledge, offering a platform for building an intelligent and
| dynamic personal knowledge management system just from your
| notes. Isn't it wonderful?
|
| ODIN introduces a multitude of functionalities to improve your
| knowledge management experience. At its core, ODIN provides a
| chat-like prompt bar for answering questions about the data
| stored in your knowledge graph as if you were just chatting with
| your knowledge collection.
|
| With ODIN's advanced graph visualization capabilities provided by
| Cytoscape, an amazing library for graph visualization with
| complete TypeScript compatibility, you gain a whole new view of
| your Obsidian vault, effortlessly navigating through the complex
| web of your notes. This extends to individual files view, where
| you can delve deep into specific topics from your markdown notes.
| Furthermore, ODIN expands the Obsidian native drop-down menu by
| adding new advanced functions. Link prediction, as its name
| suggests, generates connections to other markdown files in your
| entire vault, enriching your note's content with thematically
| relevant references. Moreover, you can extract thought-provoking
| questions from your markdown file, fostering deeper
| contemplation. Lastly, the node suggestion capability enhances
| your note-taking by highlighting thematically connected nodes,
| forging meaningful connections between highlighted text and
| related knowledge nodes, all while promoting a more comprehensive
| understanding of your stored information. On the other hand,
| clicking the node from the file view will highlight related
| sentences directly in your opened note. These features perfectly
| represent the goals we were trying to achieve and have proven to
| be useful in our daily lives, which means they might be of
| interest to other developers as well as anyone else interested in
| organizing their knowledge in a better way.
|
| The Obsidian community (including you, reading this article!) is
| the lifeblood of the platform's evolution and continued success.
| At the forefront of this community-driven ecosystem are the
| invaluable community plugins, just like ODIN. These user-
| generated extensions enhance Obsidian's functionality, addressing
| specific user needs and preferences. Becoming a part of this
| thriving community is not only about reaping the benefits of
| these plugins but also contributing to its growth. By actively
| participating in discussions, providing feedback, or even
| crafting your own plugins, you can play a pivotal role in shaping
| the future of Obsidian, enriching the collective knowledge
| management experience, and ensuring that this vibrant community
| continues to flourish.
|
| The history of the creation of this project was long (and
| sometimes painful to remember), but if you were to ask me if I
| would do it again, I would without any hesitation. Creating
| plugin-type interfaces is a breath of fresh air in frontend
| development, which still fits perfectly not only into open-source
| contribution but also into professional experience along with
| career growth. Although this project could be done better in many
| ways, it will remain a reliable indicator that modern
| technologies can and should be used in conjunction with one
| another. You, too, can become a part of this story -- open an
| issue in our GitHub repository, and we will be happy to make ODIN
| better together!
|
| I hope that I was able to ignite your interest in trying Obsidian
| or even making a more tangible contribution to this incredible
| open-source community and thank you for reading this story about
| my journey.
| bafe wrote:
| Did you ask an LLM to write this wall of text?
| for_i_in_range wrote:
| I'm not sure many are going to invest the mental energy to read
| all of this. A tl;dr summary would be nice.
| babuloseo wrote:
| Why yesh.
| throwoutway wrote:
| Just want to say this is a great idea and while I cant dive
| into it now (time) Im excited to dive into this in the future.
| Ill hve to bookmark this and return to it
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| Is this a blog-article? Why is there so much meaningless talk
| about irrelevant details?
|
| And why has a project that claims to offer new views, no
| example of those views? No screenshots, video, whatever to
| explain what it really sells.
| kristofferR wrote:
| Summary:
| https://chat.openai.com/share/0dbfcc68-0ead-4d04-93e0-00a29f...
| asynchronous wrote:
| Thank you, thought this entire output was generated with
| ChatGPT
| grozmovoi wrote:
| lol the irony
| curo wrote:
| One alternative. If you live in VS Code, consider Foam which gets
| you Roam/Obsidian like flows alongside an LLM (Github Copilot).
|
| I have no affiliation to Foam. It's just awesome.
| digdugdirk wrote:
| Have you tried Dendron? I'm at the point where I'm debating if
| I want to migrate my workflow from vscode over to emacs so I
| can use org-roam in a combined notes/code/documents workflow,
| and both dendron and foam popped up in my searching for
| alternatives.
|
| I'm curious if you had any preference or reason why you went
| with foam.
| freedomben wrote:
| Anyone know of something like this for Logseq? Given that it's
| ultimately just a bunch of markdown lists in flat files, it
| doesn't even seem like it would need Logseq specific integration
| anyway. Can one of the llama projects read notes from local files
| and answer questions about them?
| aphit wrote:
| Looks interesting but is in desperate need of an explainer video
| or some GIFs or something to showcase what it is doing. I'm not
| going to go through all the trouble of downloading and connecting
| to my OpenAI api key/Obsidian library without having a better
| grasp of what exactly it is doing.
| AlexIchenskiy wrote:
| Thanks for the constructive feedback! I'll expand the readme
| and add more details
| clscott wrote:
| I would very much appreciate the same for RUNE if you feel
| motivated.
|
| I'm looking now to choose the obsidian plugin that helps me
| take advantage of the vast amount of notes I have created
| with obsidian over the last few years.
| ttamslam wrote:
| I seem to missing something during install -- Odin is not showing
| up in the list of Community Plugins. I'm running locally via
| docker and have tried updating the Obsidian client + toggling
| restricted mode + restarting. Very excited to try it out if I can
| get the install to work.
| for_i_in_range wrote:
| I ran a poll recently in a PKM community of 17,000 members asking
| who has written a book--or created some other knowledge product
| like a course--using their tool (Obsidian, Zettelkasten, LogSeq,
| etc.).
|
| I received two responses of people who actually produced
| something.
|
| The vast majority, it seems, are professional note-taking
| junkies.
|
| People in the Obsidian forum spend their lives fooling around
| with metadata conventions and "tagging" and "wikilinks" instead
| of producing work that actually matters.
|
| Intellectual procrastination at its finest.
|
| Now we have this... ODIN--a way to outsource your intellectual
| note-taking procrastination to AI.
|
| Note: The requirement wasn't just a book. It was any "published
| knowledge product" which I define as book, code, course, essay,
| etc. (What Naval Ravikant calls Specific Knowledge).
| kashunstva wrote:
| > I received two responses of people who actually produced
| something. The vast majority, it seems, are professional note-
| taking junkies.
|
| Is external visibility of some output or work product the sole
| marker of true utility of these tools if one is to avoid the
| judgement of intellectual procrastination? I'd rather think
| that's not the case.
| mellosouls wrote:
| _Note: The requirement wasn 't just a book. It was any
| "published knowledge product"_
|
| Frankly, I could do with far fewer "published knowledge
| products" doing the rounds, and I'm glad that most users are
| using it as intended, not to get some absurd "published writer"
| badge to flash to the easily impressed.
| smeej wrote:
| Why is writing long-form works the only type of output that
| matters?
|
| I use my PKM to connect the ideas I've read about over time.
| When I come across a topic again, I can quickly review what
| I've learned about it in the past, and how it connects,
| sometimes in obscure ways, to other things that have crossed my
| radar.
|
| This helps me come up with a wider variety of ideas for how to
| solve problems in front of me, or new connections to draw on or
| people to contact for feedback.
|
| I don't care about any one topic enough to devote the necessary
| time to writing a book about it, but that doesn't mean the
| system as a whole doesn't provide me a whole lot of value.
|
| Maybe this is just a misunderstanding between the specialist
| mind and generalist minds. The variety of things I can speak
| about and connect together intelligently _is_ the value I bring
| to a company or a conversation, not the extraordinary depth I
| can go to on any one individual topic. I suspect there are a
| lot more generalists like me using PKM software like Obsidian
| than there are specialists.
| paint wrote:
| [dead]
| freedomben wrote:
| Same. The more busy and more I have to multi-task and/or
| manage multiple long-running threads, the more it helps.
|
| Here's a real example: Just this morning I was setting up my
| new 13th gen framework laptop (it's amazing btw, thank you to
| framework for making Fedora such a great experience on it!),
| and I hit Ctrl+r in my terminal to find a previous command. I
| was surprised to see the standard bash handler instead of the
| fancy terminal history tool that I installed on my previous
| laptop. Using my notes I was able to quickly find that the
| tool is "atuin" and I was able to see exactly what commands I
| ran to set it up back in the day. This is a tool that doesn't
| have a great installation story for Fedora. I ended up
| building rom source and installing, and I'm not a rust person
| so I would have to look that all up had it not been in my
| notes. I didn't have time for a long distraction, and my
| notes saved me on that. It probably adds a 10% to 20%
| overhead of effort to the original task, but then saves me
| time in the future.
|
| I have also benefitted greatly from numerous notes on
| customers/clients that I can pull up and see quickly what the
| last thing I did/said to them was. After months of not
| talking to them, it's very easy to forget or blend their
| details into other customers. The notes can be life savers.
|
| There have also been times when I needed to do some technical
| task and I remembered having done it years earlier. Finding
| those notes can be an incredible time saver, especially when
| it skips me past the first couple hours of research!
| j45 wrote:
| OP is not aware that expert publishing can also be short,
| concise and illuminating.
|
| Using a PKM frees up time for other pursuits.
| browningstreet wrote:
| How many people who've bought a paper notebook and pen have
| published same..?
|
| I use Obsidian with a partner to organize an archive that's
| used to publish a website, a substack and a podcast. I am
| familiar with the YouTube obsidian note taking subculture and
| it's pretty mega, but online-everything is a poor measure of
| the real thing in life. Just as Twitter isn't reality, etc
| etc....
| SamBam wrote:
| The population in your poll is the group of people who engage
| in a PKM community, _not_ the group of people who use a note-
| taking app.
|
| Those are two very different things.
| pydry wrote:
| I did this for a while. I think it was a kind of psychological
| displacement behavior - when I felt a lack of control over my
| life. A bit like playing animal crossing.
|
| At some point I switched to treating notes as a pipeline - that
| is, if theres nothing coming out the other end (e.g. a
| document, a checklist I actually follow, an email, a reminder,
| a blog post, a jira ticket, etc.) then the activity is
| pointless.
|
| Doing this meant it actually does bring value now.
|
| LLMs seem like a singularly pointless addition in that respect,
| though.
| bafe wrote:
| I really like your approach of treating notes like a
| pipeline. I keep several lists and I noticed the only useful
| ones are those where I regularly cross item off and add new
| items. All other lists end up being cemeteries for ideas
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| > I ran a poll recently in a PKM community of 17,000 members
| asking who has written a book--or created some other knowledge
| product like a course--using their tool (Obsidian,
| Zettelkasten, LogSeq, etc.).
|
| That's a very limited choice of options. Or poor phrasing.
|
| > I received two responses of people who actually produced
| something.
|
| So the others ignored it?
|
| > The vast majority, it seems, are professional note-taking
| junkies.
|
| I'm not sure if this is poorly phrased or an insult. And what
| does professional mean? Most of what I manage with Obsidian are
| private data, nothing work-related.
|
| > People in the Obsidian forum spend their lives fooling around
| with metadata conventions and "tagging" and "wikilinks"
|
| That's the point of a forum. Talking. Fooling around. How many
| will you see there talking about the boring stuff? How they use
| Obsidian for managing contacts, their mealplans, the other
| boring notes. Probably not many. You will also see the small
| number of shining characters and fancy solutions, but not much
| about casual thing people also do.
| PeterisP wrote:
| I think the key point here is that for the vast majority of
| knowledge workers their knowledge work isn't really supposed to
| result in "published knowledge product" ever, and lack of such
| a product doesn't imply that they're ineffective since they can
| be wildly successful at their goals anyway, since why would
| their goals include producing such a product?
|
| IMHO people taking notes for personal reasons (or building
| personal knowledge bases just as external memory for their
| personal expertise) far outnumber people who do that with the
| intent to compile those notes in some knowledge product for
| others.
|
| Sure, some people take notes for a book or build a knowledge
| base that they'll summarize for others in a course or essay(s).
| But people with such intent are few, so these aren't the
| central applications of such tools, the stereotypical knowledge
| workers - like lawyers, doctors, engineers - all mostly apply
| their knowledge (including digital notes) not to produce or
| publish something but rather to solve a problem or provide an
| informed answer, and equating all this "non-producing"
| knowledge work to intellectual procrastination is quite
| insulting.
| ethanbond wrote:
| I suppose they should be doing productive things like running
| useless and malformed polls to confirm priors.
| zoogeny wrote:
| I saw this YouTube video about some historical document from
| the middle ages (maybe the dark ages?). It was a set of
| journals/diaries written by a pretty normal guy who lived
| during the reformation. At first he was documenting the social
| changes that were going on but pretty soon his journal became a
| hodgepodge of personal anecdotes, descriptions of his fellow
| towns folks, gossip and rumors, etc.
|
| One thing that was interesting to me was that he kept a list of
| amusing anecdotes. The guy was trying to move up in life, so he
| was doing his best to network with the wealthy elite of his
| town. He had a personal database of jokes and amusing stories
| that he could bring up, I guess hoping to gain favor or
| friendship with the right people.
|
| I've thought about this kind of activity a lot. Not all writing
| is meant to be for distribution. This guy wasn't writing to
| compile a tell-all expose of his tiny provincial town. He was
| writing entirely for his own selfish benefit.
|
| As curious as it may sound, I can totally understand wanting to
| hook up an AI to this kind of personal database. Something to
| make my anecdotes a bit more funny. Or to connect rumors in a
| way to give me the best gossip.
|
| It reminds me of how VIP type people often have some intern or
| research assistant who feeds them personal details of the
| people they are going to meet, so the VIP can warmly ask "How
| is your daughter Sally?" when shaking hands with someone who is
| actually a stranger to them.
|
| Not all knowledge is a product. If you see knowledge as a
| service then these kind of tools make a bit more sense.
| freedomben wrote:
| If you could remember the Youtube video, or the name of the
| guy or something, this is something I would _love_ to read
| /watch/etc.
| npunt wrote:
| same. this anecdote is great, its fun to find connection to
| random people through history.
| [deleted]
| mejutoco wrote:
| This was part of the plot in the movie Miss Sloane.
| harperlee wrote:
| How many people of those 17,000 members answered "No" on your
| poll, to have the denominator? Typically less than 1% of
| readers actively engage in the communities, or so I have read
| here in HN. Without a more specific denominator 2 out of 17,000
| is the number of people that read you, cared to answer you,
| self-identified with what you asked specifically, AND "actually
| produced something".
| brightball wrote:
| I mean...I use Obsidian daily to take notes for my own
| reference for work every day. It's also typically the place I
| write blog posts before I publish them to various sites.
|
| I feel like you're giving a very specific use case for
| production to a tool that isn't really geared for that thing.
| If I was going to write a book, and I may one day, I don't know
| whether Obsidian is the tool I'd use or if I'd be better off
| using tools that are designed for it?
| wlesieutre wrote:
| What do you think you'd find if you took a similar poll of
| people who have taken notes on a piece of paper? Have most of
| them published a book?
|
| My Obsidian vault is full of things like lists of hiking trails
| I want to check out, information on workshop dust collection,
| and notes on car shopping. Why would you expect that I'm trying
| to write a book about it?
| for_i_in_range wrote:
| Probably a higher ratio have, yes. Less distracting things to
| fool around with when you use a pen, paper, and your brain.
| PurpleRamen wrote:
| No, they have not. There are likely far more people taking
| notes on paper, than there are people who are using
| Obsidian or similar. Especially when we are not just
| looking at the present world.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| I just don't see why you're taking a leap from "Personal
| knowledge management" to "Should aspire to write a book
| about it"
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| To be fair, a lot of people get marketed a "Zettelkasten"
| because the creator wrote lots and lots of books, and
| this was seen as proof that the system works. OP didn't
| pull that out of his ass
| ethanbond wrote:
| To be fair, a lot of people write notes for the purpose
| of writing notes. Yes he did pull it out of his ass for a
| very, very tired critique of people who are into note-
| taking.
| for_i_in_range wrote:
| Said "other knowledge product" which includes essays,
| course, code, etc.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| The knowledge product of my notebook _is_ the notebook. I
| use it to look up things that I wrote down previously. I
| also use the process of writing things down in it to
| guide my thought process.
| bhdlr wrote:
| It seems like you're being needlessly confrontational
|
| Usually people take notes for a reason, they don't just
| take notes and toss them
| whimsicalism wrote:
| This is such a nonsense thread, this is a terrible sparse
| and high variance metric for the point you are interested
| in making.
| antonvs wrote:
| I don't hang out in any community like that, but I use Logseq
| and Emacs org mode to organize my work at two funded startups,
| plus occasional consulting to other businesses.
|
| Among other things, I use them for developing design documents,
| both for my own use and for wider distribution. Often I'll do
| the initial work in one and then convert to a pdf, word or
| google doc, or wiki pages for consumption by others.
|
| I also use them just to track work that I've done, which helps
| a lot with context switching between projects.
|
| I used to just use mostly plain text files to do this, but
| these tools provide a lot of additional features that make it
| easier to create and manage useful notes.
| rhtgrg wrote:
| I've written several books using Foam and VScode and I avoid
| those communities like the plague precisely because they love
| the tool more than the problems it solves.
|
| I've also published (and maintain) several websites using
| special tags and Hugo tools that compile to HTML markup
| complete with the requisite hyperlinks and attachments.
|
| I don't like Obsidian much, personally. I love to customize my
| tools just enough to get them out of the way.
|
| Notes on the system:
| https://csh.rit.edu/~rg/productivity/20221109203834/
|
| Example site: https://csh.rit.edu/~rg/alphasmart-3000/
| DennisP wrote:
| > Now we have this... ODIN--a way to outsource your
| intellectual note-taking procrastination to AI.
|
| I'm not sure but it sounds like you're scoffing at that. To me
| it sounds like the _solution_ to people spending too much time
| tagging and linking their notes.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| I use obsidian for ttrpg world building so I can jump around
| via links when the party encounters a particular area (helps
| prevent on-the-rails campaigns.)
|
| Your definition of what "actually matters" seems to be
| different than mine.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| forward-slashed wrote:
| Maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe ask how many publish
| papers or write serious blog posts?
| lolive wrote:
| We use Obsidian extensively in my company. And are sharing our
| notes as a graph of decentralized vaults, managed by Github
| repos and a bunch of synchronization scripts. That is an
| experience of collective intelligence that is going super well.
| (having access to other people notes in a unified search engine
| is SUPER nuts!)
|
| My humble 2 cents.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Maybe procrastination isn't the right characterization of note-
| taking.
|
| For me, Obsidian is a place to dump thoughts, keep ideas for
| later, and a scratchpad. It lets me clear my mind of all of the
| random things that pop up so I can focus more on the tasks at
| hand. It might sound silly but writing out all the things I've
| been thinking about does wonders for freeing up mental
| bandwidth, which in my experience is critical for being
| productive -- it's a lot harder to maintain focus when you've
| got a bunch of different thoughts vying for processing power.
|
| I might not revisit all of my notes, but that's fine. They're
| there when/if I decide to turn them into projects.
|
| I don't go too far on the organizational or bells and whistles
| aspects though, the extent of that is folders and the odd tag
| here and there, because neither really matters much so long as
| I can find my writings easily.
| grozmovoi wrote:
| > It lets me clear my mind of all of the random things that
| pop up so I can focus more on the tasks at hand.
|
| I think this is key here. It's the same for me. If I don't
| dump my thoughts int o an organized form they will nag me.
| When I write them down (and about most of them, I forget or
| delete later), it allows me to work on the task at hand. If I
| don't, I end up thinking about all the avenues of exploration
| of those ideas, todos, etc...
|
| It's akin to how instead of keeping those thoughts in RAM I
| put them in my SSD. RAM is just for what's happening now.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Yep. It's an interesting effect. I think half the reason
| things get stuck in my head like that is because they're
| interesting and I don't want to forget them, so my mind
| keeps wandering its way back to them. "Hey, what about that
| fun idea?"
|
| By writing them down I no longer have to worry about them
| being forgotten since I can always scan over my notes when
| I've got spare mental bandwidth to work with, which stops
| my mind from wandering.
| the_fury wrote:
| Due to me procrastinating with my notes, I was able to
| remember that I had touched on this before. According to my
| Obsidian notes:
|
| "Zeigarnik Effect Directs Our Focus Onto Unfinished Tasks"
| j45 wrote:
| You seem to conflate publishing a book with some kind of
| legitimacy.
|
| And also determining that if you can't see value in "note
| taking", there is none.
|
| The piece your analysis grossly overlooks is the ability to
| handle many more things at once using a pkm as second brain.
|
| It's unfortunate you may not have enough experience with GTD
| and what it has evolved into.
|
| If you approached this post again with an open mind and heart
| and said you expected a lot of authors and instead people seem
| to manage knowledge .. why, and how are people using it for
| value.. it might be a conversation.
|
| It is entirely possible to publish knowledge products at any
| time.
|
| In the working world they might include meeting agendas, notes,
| okr reports, emails and updates to projects.
|
| All can be both specific and esoteric knowledge but many orders
| of magnitude better organized than their peers.
| rednafi wrote:
| This, so much this. On Twitter, I asked how many people have
| published a blogpost or anything worth mentioning with
| obsidian. Turns out my network had 200+ Obsidian users and none
| of them published anything.
|
| I know the sample size is small but I got similar response with
| Notion 2 years ago. I use Apple Notes personal note taking and
| plain markdown with an SSG for publishing blog posts and work.
| No books yet but I have published over 150+ posts in the past 3
| years:
|
| markdown files:
| https://github.com/rednafi/rednafi.com/tree/main/content
| published work: https://rednafi.com
|
| Also, another tool written in JavaScript on my machine, I'll
| pass!
| laurent_du wrote:
| I use logseq daily to keep track of what I do in my job as a
| SWE. Having this structured archive is invaluable. I don't
| understand why you think that note-taking is only justified if
| you want to create some kind of product - that's a very weird
| take in my opinion.
| bafe wrote:
| I had the same impression. They constantly tweak the tools
| instead of just accepting for what it is and taking their
| notes/writing their documents. I'd argue if you care so much
| about note taking software it would be a better use of time to
| develop your own tool from scratch. At least you would learn
| something useful and get some experience
| NhanH wrote:
| I made the same conclusion and started making a tool on my
| own from scratch! Turned out it did take much less effort to
| build something you are happy with than tweaking existing
| tools.
|
| PWA with Rails/React, editor is Lexical (because why markdown
| when you can have note looks pretty), hosted on a machine at
| home that I connect via tailscale.
|
| I already added LLM integrations too.
| bafe wrote:
| I would think so too... and even if it doesn't fit you
| perfectly at least you learn a lot on the way. If you just
| play with plugins and tweak existing tools, I believe you
| won't learn anything of substance
| [deleted]
| jwells89 wrote:
| I love the idea of building a bespoke notes app for myself,
| but then again if I had the time and energy I'd probably
| build my own everything simply because it's interesting and
| it feels like there's unharvested low-hanging fruit in terms
| of UX improvements across just about all software categories.
|
| Until then though, I'll be keeping the tinkering to a
| minimum. Honestly speaking I could probably get by just fine
| with Sublime Text, a folder full of markdown files, and
| Syncthing... the main attractions of Obsidian, etc are little
| QoL features like separate fonts for prose and code.
| bafe wrote:
| I think you described the problem very well: the premise
| behind PKM/note taking is to boost productivity. If you
| assume this to be true, the only way to be productive is to
| stop tweaking endlessly and accept the limitations of your
| tooling
| Rebuff5007 wrote:
| A "PKM" (personal knowledge management i am assuming) community
| seems self-selecting for the kind of result you got.
|
| I would do the opposite -- talk to people who clearly have a
| need for corralling large amounts of information (authors, phd
| students), and take a a look at what tools they used. It might
| not be Obsidian or LogSeq specifically, but I'm sure they have
| some very specific system that works for them... even if its a
| just a bunch of google docs.
| ethanbond wrote:
| Hey buddy unless you are publishing "Specific Knowledge"
| (shout out lord Naval for some reason), you have no business
| writing shit down in a way that you might be able to retrieve
| it in the future.
|
| You must write on napkins and throw it in the trash or else
| you are a tryhard pseudo-productivity junkie.
| aeonik wrote:
| Zotero is your answer, it even auto generates your citations.
|
| https://www.zotero.org/
|
| Apparently there are plugins for Logseq and Obsidian as well.
| https://github.com/vyleung/logseq-logtero-plugin
|
| https://github.com/mgmeyers/obsidian-zotero-integration
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Instead of a disclaimer first thing I see and install
| instructions, they should explain how it works first
| jackthetab wrote:
| They should explain what it _does_. I looked it over and I
| still have no idea why I should install it other than it uses
| $CURRENT_FAD.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Is very heads down engineer like to not know anything about
| marketing.
| tinix wrote:
| isn't this antithetical to the spirit of obsidian?
|
| tossing one's private notes to openai seems odd for such a tool
| that is marketed this way:
|
| > Obsidian is the private and flexible writing app that adapts to
| the way you think.
|
| > Obsidian stores notes on your device, so you can access them
| quickly, even offline. No one else can read them, not even us.
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Best of luck. We need more of such tools in this note-taking and
| management area.
|
| A YC Startup, Khoj[1], recently did a ShowHN[2]. It works and has
| several options, including an Obsidian Plugin and for Emacs.
| Unfortunately, it drags my computer, and I can't do anything else
| much once I run the local server. Perhaps, once I upgrade out of
| my Intel iMac, I will return to it.
|
| (I'm not affiliated to Khoj.)
|
| 1. https://khoj.dev
|
| 2. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36933452
| lolive wrote:
| "It is recommended that you have access to GPT-4 via the OpenAI
| API."
|
| Does this sentence imply that some data of my vault will be sent
| to OpenAI? [nut sure my company will be fond of that]
| xcdzvyn wrote:
| Yes. I wish more services like these at least had the option of
| using a local model..
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