[HN Gopher] Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
___________________________________________________________________
Knowledge Management in the Age of AI
Author : katabasis
Score : 109 points
Date : 2025-06-08 04:05 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (ericgardner.info)
(TXT) w3m dump (ericgardner.info)
| 8s2ngy wrote:
| > Emacs is a powerful tool, but it also demands a lot from its
| user. Eventually I got tired of dealing with the host of plugins
| and customizations that I needed to keep my system running the
| way I wanted. I'm at a point in my life where I would rather
| spend my spare time on hobbies, hanging out with family and
| friends, and otherwise not messing around with a patchwork of
| ELisp code snippets that I've cobbled together from various
| sources.
|
| On the flip side, my experience with Emacs has been quite
| different. You don't need a ton of plugins to get the most out of
| it; I've been using the same configuration of under 200 lines for
| the past six years without encountering any breaking changes. I
| rely on Magit, Org-mode, Org-roam, and Org-agenda every single
| day.
|
| That said, using Emacs does require some commitment to reading
| the documentation. While I agree that it has some outdated
| defaults, you only need to make those adjustments once.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Emacs is an incredible, powerful tool. It just lacks a decent
| editor.
| spit2wind wrote:
| I second this. Emacs is plenty capable out of the box and just
| fine that way. It's a "choose your own adventure" that allows
| you to be as disciplined or as reckless as you choose. It's
| almost like it grants you...freedom :)
|
| I think this SO question demonstrates this well. The question
| is how to select a window quickly. You can install umpteen
| different packages and have several black-box soltions, if you
| want. But it really can be as simple as this if it fits your
| need:
|
| ``` ;; Select the 3rd window in the `window-list' (select-
| window (nth 2 (window-list))) ```
|
| Emacs almost always allows you to find a solution in-between.
|
| https://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/79692
| sorokod wrote:
| The OP linked "You'll Never Think Alone"[1] is a good read.
|
| [1] https://publiccomment.blog/p/you-ll-never-think-
| alone-170518...
| jplusequalt wrote:
| Great article, but I think this article will get a look of flak
| from the people who frequent HN.
| agnishom wrote:
| > Obsidian: An Org-Mode replacement?
|
| I doubt it. Obsidian is not open source, and the core is
| maintained by a small group of people, rather than a community.
| What happens when the company dies?
|
| That said, I am willing to have more faith in Obsidian, than many
| other things since they are not [VC
| funded](https://stephango.com/vcware)
| raincole wrote:
| Which is a bit of bummer, as I think they would be doing
| perfectly fine if they had open-sourced Obsidian's client and
| just sell sync service (as they are doing now anyway).
| trallnag wrote:
| They also sell a business license. I wonder how much money
| they make with that compared to the sync service.
| aquariusDue wrote:
| I believe it's now free for commercial use.
|
| https://obsidian.md/blog/free-for-work/
| trallnag wrote:
| Wow, I totally missed that. Very unexpected to me
| jll29 wrote:
| The money is not the problem - you want the source code
| so that if the company disappears, you can still maintain
| the software.
|
| I would prefer to buy from those commercial players that
| have a clause in their license saying upon sunsetting the
| commercial offering or closure of the company the source
| code becomes open source. In the absence of such a
| clause, I prefer open source solutions.
|
| [RMS was right saying "Free as in 'freedom' is not about
| payment." There can be paid-for open source software, and
| there can be free-of-charge commercial software, but the
| freedom to edit and recompile is the most important
| aspect of "being free".]
| aquariusDue wrote:
| I'd prefer if computing wasn't structured around the idea
| of applications and the social component preferred the
| UNIX way of piping data through various small programs
| till the desired output manifested and then shared
| recipes instead of "software", but here I am enjoying
| YouTube on a small device that's completely locked.
|
| But yeah, your vision is the next best thing I like to
| day dream about sadly.
| dotancohen wrote:
| You can still do that with Org files. I would say that
| grep touches my Org files more often than Emacs does.
|
| I had the same workflow with Markdown files if you prefer
| the closed source Markdown editors. At the time, I was
| using VIM for editing and viewing the Markdown files.
| exceptione wrote:
| With so many oss contenders in this space, it wouldn't
| surprise me if they eventually opensource it.
|
| If not, someone might make an api-compatible oss clone,
| because lots of the value is in the myriad of plugins.
|
| Obsidian's ace however is it's great wyiwyg text editor if
| you ask me, enabling friction-free writing.
| iansinnott wrote:
| The author of that post also addresses this question in
| another: https://stephango.com/file-over-app
|
| > The app will eventually become obsolete. It's the plain text
| files I create that are designed to last.
| jiri wrote:
| With Obsidian, you have all your markdown files on your disk,
| so you can use vi or emacs to view and edit them while someone
| else put together replacement app ...
| aquariusDue wrote:
| There's also something nice about having everything in the same
| place, at least until Obsidian becomes a code editor and email
| reader. For a while I thought that Neovim might be the next
| Emacs (if you squint a bit) but looks like Obsidian is halfway
| there if you take a look at the plugin landscape and what
| people are doing at the extreme ends.
|
| Also stuff like Bases[0] might be the thing that entrenches
| Obsidian even further as an IDE for knowledge work (more or
| less).
|
| [0]: https://help.obsidian.md/bases
| greymalik wrote:
| It doesn't matter if Obsidian dies. The files are standard
| markdown you control and there is no lock-in. You can simply
| move on to another tool.
| layer8 wrote:
| You seem to be saying that the tool doesn't matter. However,
| people who use Obsidian typically use it for a reason (other
| than the file format) over other tools.
| al_borland wrote:
| This depends how deep down the rabbit hole someone goes. At a
| basic level, yes, this is true. However, if someone has built
| a complex system around properties, data views, and various
| other plugins, they're going to have a hard time.
|
| There is a lot to be said for the value of simplicity, if one
| of the goals is portability.
| aerhardt wrote:
| I use Obsidian with very few plugins, most of which only
| affect rendering. The UI is clean, minimalistic, beautiful.
| I came to it because I was looking for a text editor with a
| Vim plugin. All in all it's the best text editor I have
| ever used in my life.
| oth001 wrote:
| Joplin?
| kreyenborgi wrote:
| I use gptel in emacs, and keep around some of the chats and such
| as notes, along with my regular notes, it's all org-mode. I
| already used to keep around snippets copy-pasted from the web.
| This is knowledge management in the age of AI (except it works,
| it's useful and mundane and so I guess it's no longer AI, maybe I
| have to start using MCP agents or whatever the next partially-
| there thing is to be AI)
| bachmeier wrote:
| > Task-tracking and note-taking are practical and useful, but
| ultimately I want to treat my own thoughts as if they have value.
| I want to be a little more intentional and deliberate in my own
| thinking, and to have a space to engage in dialog with my own
| ideas. I want to be able to draw from my own knowledge instead of
| relying on AI assistants for everything. Maybe such an approach
| can even be complimentary to using AI tools; with the right
| plugins Obsidian can serve as an MCP server, which would allow
| tools like Claude to discover and read items in your vault.
| Perhaps this could offer the best of both worlds. But the key
| thing is that the AI is the assistant, and my thoughts and ideas
| remain my own.
|
| Maybe I'm missing the author's point, as it's early here, but I
| don't see how your own thoughts can possibly lack value because
| of AI. LLMs can only summarize the documents it was trained on,
| so it has no way to tell you what you're thinking (like why
| something is wrong). The value of AI is using RAG or semantic
| search to make your notes more useful to you. What the author's
| suggesting is outside the capabilities of current LLMs. By
| design, AI can only be used as an assistant.
| crashabr wrote:
| Crazy coincidence as I just started setting up my PARA system on
| Logseq.
| ta988 wrote:
| Yeah PARA is the new hype in knowledge management, those come
| and go (Zettelkasten, atomic notes...) I don't find PARA
| particularly useful. Using links and tags with no directories
| at all work much better for me. But I think that's the nice
| thing (and also the curse) of all of those you can spend your
| time biie shedding with the different versions of yourself in
| time instead of using it for your life.
| leakycap wrote:
| Took me a minute to understand you meant bike-shedding, which
| was an interesting rabbit hole - thanks for your typo!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_triviality
| al_borland wrote:
| I couldn't wrap my head around PARA. The waters were too muddy
| between projects, areas, and resources.
|
| Take travel for example. I have travel resources (packing
| lists, loyalty reward numbers, etc). I would presumably have a
| travel area, as it's something I'd like to be a semi-major part
| of my life long-term. But I'd also think whatever trips I'm
| currently planning are "projects". Does this mean 3 travel
| folders, in 3 different parents, so I have to go 3 places for
| one topic?
|
| It all seemed so confusing.
| leakycap wrote:
| I look at these systems like I look at templates or Lego
| instructions... here's what you can do! Now go do you.
|
| GTD from the days of Palm PDAs still works fantastically if
| you just use it.
|
| The key is just to choose a system that seems like it will
| work for you based on the published "way to use" it ... and
| then make it your own and stop looking.
|
| You basically need a monogamous relationship with blinders on
| so you can actually become a deep expert in your own
| productivity tool and be able to rely on it and refer to it
| without thinking.
| minikomi wrote:
| Denote with a gptel-make-tool that's able to pull relevant notes
| and bring it automatically into context is fantastic.
| aquariusDue wrote:
| Semi related there's also ekg which stores notes in a sqlite
| database and uses tags as titles as in you don't really have to
| name a note per se and multiple notes can share a "title" which
| is just a tag.
|
| But that's not why I mentioned ekg, the reason is that it does
| embedding out of the box, here's a quote from the repo on
| GitHub:
|
| "There is support for attaching Large Language Model (LLM)
| "embeddings" to notes, for use in search and similarity search,
| via the llm package. This allows you to search based on
| semantics, as opposed to text matching. You can also use LLM
| chat in your notes, getting an LLM to respond to your notes
| based on a default prompt, or new prompts that you add."
|
| These days I feel like you have lots of great options for note-
| taking in Emacs and you're not forced to use the org format
| unless you want to.
|
| ekg repo: https://github.com/ahyatt/ekg
| jiri wrote:
| I am also worried a bit about knowledge nowadays.
|
| With LLM-based AI, should one also store individual chats in
| personal knowledge system? Yeah, I believe that some my chats are
| quite full of relevant info, that can be used in the future.
|
| Also what is the right general approach here - should I ask the
| same question several times (every time I need information) or
| should I just look up previous answer in my history? To be fair I
| dont store google results, I just search it again, but with chat
| the path to right answer is often more complex than spitting few
| words in google search input box.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| slight tangent: google's search results are abysmal, strong
| recommendation to try kagi instead.
| exiguus wrote:
| I looked into Obsidian a few years ago but decided against it due
| to the lack of encryption and self-hosting options. Are there now
| any workarounds or solutions available that provide encryption
| and self-hosting capabilities?
| bram85 wrote:
| https://standardnotes.com/
|
| They have a dedicated page that compares with Obsidian here:
|
| https://standardnotes.com/compare/obsidian-alternative
| wim wrote:
| We're working on a new IDE but for tasks/notes [1] which is
| end-to-end-encrypted and optionally self-hostable
|
| [1] https://thymer.com
| gdulli wrote:
| https://notesnook.com/
| al_borland wrote:
| Not sure on encryption, but the notes themselves are just files
| and folders, you can host and sync the files with anything you
| want. Unless you're talking about wanting it as a self-hosted
| web app?
| exiguus wrote:
| My primary concern is the lack of encryption for the notes.
| This absence of encryption leaves them exposed and
| vulnerable. Relying on third-party services like Dropbox,
| iCloud, or similar platforms to sync notes across devices
| only heightens the potential for data exposure. There is also
| a Obsidian forum thread about that [1].
|
| I believe the primary issue with nearly all note-taking tools
| is the lack of genuine encryption. Many claim to use end-to-
| end encryption, but I find this misleading. End-to-end
| encryption secures communication, not the data itself.
|
| I wouldn't recommend a tool to anyone that doesn't encrypt
| the data itself to maintain private notes. Its like storing
| your passwords in plain text.
|
| [1] https://forum.obsidian.md/t/local-file-encryption-of-
| obsidia...
| xxpor wrote:
| This is such a trivial problem to solve. Full disk
| encryption, or something like
| https://github.com/tejado/obsidian-gpgCrypt
| exiguus wrote:
| I like the gpgCrypt approach, but its not trustable.
| ebiester wrote:
| AI isn't quite good enough for organizing your notes yet.
| However, the biggest issue with our notes is that we make them
| for us, not another person, so the context is lacking for search.
| leakycap wrote:
| I recently searched "starbuck" in Apple Notes and it didn't
| find the note because the phrase in the note was actually
| "Starbuck's"
|
| I add plaintext keywords to the notes I write myself, but
| sometimes the note app is truly the problem when search
| implementation/tokenization doesn't make sense.
| cratermoon wrote:
| The author doesn't mention what I consider the true value of
| writing and organizing your notes yourself: that work _is_ the
| work that drives learning and understanding.
|
| I experimented with feeding my notes into an LLM model for RAG
| and was underwhelmed. The resulting output was repetitive,
| stilted, dry, and uninspiring. I wanted it to see if it find
| relationships between my ideas that I had not found on my own,
| but was disappointed . It did not provide me any new insights
| into my thinking. The style of what it did write was so foreign
| to my own style I found myself needing to read and re-interpret
| what it wrote back into my own ways of thinking that it was more
| busywork than help.
| treetalker wrote:
| Yes. People seem to be forgetting that, in many contexts, the
| greater part (or at least a major part) of work's desired
| outcome is to make changes to the conscious and subconscious
| minds that enable them to better handle future situations.
|
| I'm all about automated solutions for things -- but I find that
| my desires are typically for unrewarding physical activities. I
| still don't have a virtually costless robot butler, driver,
| farmer, chef, and maid to anticipate my needs around the house
| and home office; to transport my family and me around town
| safely and on time; to grow microplastic-free food
| hydroponically; to do my meal planning, shopping, cooking,
| cleaning, tidying, and laundry with effectively no intervention
| and supervision on my part. Why not?
|
| Now _that_ would really 10x my productivity.
| awinter-py wrote:
| why the H does this have the same opening line as moby dick
|
| why are emacs users like this
| dpassens wrote:
| I'm not seeing any "Call me Ishmael".
| awinter-py wrote:
| some years ago
|
| > Call me Ishmael. Some years ago--never mind how long
| precisely--having little or no money in my purse, and nothing
| particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail
| about a little and see the watery part of the world
| layer8 wrote:
| "Some years ago" isn't a Moby Dick-ism, it's perfectly
| normal English to open an anecdote with.
| awinter-py wrote:
| 'some years ago I went through a phase' in an
| introduction is plausibly a moby dick reference
| fluidcruft wrote:
| Is there something you want to tell us about having read
| Herman Melville's classic American epic novel Moby Dick
| (1851)?
| layer8 wrote:
| It's really not. "Some years ago" is a very common
| phrase, completely unrelated to its occurrence in Moby
| Dick. Its use in Moby Dick isn't iconic or anything like
| that.
| cjauvin wrote:
| > Emacs is a powerful tool, but it also demands a lot from its
| user. Eventually I got tired of dealing with the host of plugins
| and customizations that I needed to keep my system running the
| way I wanted. I'm at a point in my life where I would rather
| spend my spare time on hobbies, hanging out with family and
| friends, and otherwise not messing around with a patchwork of
| ELisp code snippets that I've cobbled together from various
| sources. I gradually stopped using Emacs in favor of more modern
| tools that are less flexible but also less of a hassle.
|
| I don't know how many times I've read a variation on this. It
| took me a very long time, but now I pretty much made my peace
| with that: I use Emacs (for certain things), I use VS Code (with
| Emacs bindings), I use Apple Notes.. I don't find that it's
| possible or reasonable anymore, the desire to be "pure" and use
| only ONE tool to rule them all. The same for messaging apps,
| chatbots, etc.. I now embrace extreme diversity.
| nextos wrote:
| > Eventually I got tired of dealing with the host of plugins
| and customizations
|
| The trick is to stick to as few packages and as little
| configuration as possible. And when opting to install a
| package, sticking to something popular and well maintained.
| This leads to a small and robust setup with little churn. Most
| built-in packages work out of the box. Most defaults make a lot
| of sense. Emacs is really tidy these days compared to where it
| was one decade ago. Package management has been key
| facilitating this.
|
| Personally, I use major packages like AUCTeX, Org, Magit, or
| gptel with little to no customization and I avoid installing
| lesser known packages that build on top of them as I have found
| this to be a major source of fragility. You can get a lot of
| functionality from a boring 50 LOC .emacs/init.el that consists
| of a few straightforward use-package directives.
| coltoneakins wrote:
| This makes me feel seen. I was a lunatic at one point trying to
| make Emacs to be my end-all-be-all. I learned to cope with
| multiple programs being my "toolset" since then.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I've been using pen & paper lately.
|
| The context switch between digital and analog is compelling.
| There is something satisfying about throwing a piece of physical
| paper away after pushing your commits.
|
| I tend to hoard information, so having a medium that is highly
| constrained keeps me honest with what I hold onto over time. Not
| being able to do full text search over my notes means I prefer to
| keep no more than ~one legal pad active at any given time.
|
| I also tend to get distracted with shiny technology tools. I can
| take my notes anywhere. I don't need an internet connection. I
| can fold the piece of paper and store it in my wallet.
| treetalker wrote:
| Lindy effect. I'm in the same boat, albeit in the legal realm.
| saulpw wrote:
| Yup. I use 3x5 notecards. I like their "heft" and the fact that
| I can't lose a physical card like I lose digital content.
| dotancohen wrote:
| I must be old. I remember the naive days of thinking that
| once something is on a hard drive, it can't be lost like
| something in your pocket.
|
| I think I got over that sometime while Clinton was in office
| ))
| leakycap wrote:
| Knowledge is as much about familiarity as anything else
|
| I started my personal knowledge base in the days of Mac OS 8 and
| still use it. Classic Mac OS with it's spacial finder and 1-to-1
| file and window mapping works so well for my brain I still use it
| today for things I want to save and refer to.
|
| I use & subscribe to AIs, but my personal knowledge is kept in
| the system I can use like the back of my hand, which happened to
| be the Macintosh Finder for me.
| briian wrote:
| I think the key to ensuring you don't lose your own ability to
| think is to just delay the onset of using AI when solving a
| problem.
|
| The more deeply you think, you train your brain harder, but also
| improve the utility of the AI systems themselves because you can
| prompt better.
| joshuajooste05 wrote:
| I constantly find myself just jumping to AI whenever I have a
| question. It is actually scaring me how much I just rely on it.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| There is value in trying to figure things out on your own, but
| even then if you can resist the temptation to let the machine
| think for you, I think AI is still useful for clarifying the
| problem and working through pros and cons of your ideas to
| solve it.
| resize2996 wrote:
| Of course, but there comes a point when doing long division by
| hand no longer adds to my understanding.
| bsenftner wrote:
| Every article that begins with any variation of loses me
| immediately:
|
| "I went through a phase that I imagine many software developers
| go through at least once in their careers--a period of intense
| fascination with Emacs..."
|
| What is this widespread overt fascination with the tools one use?
| I've always been aware of a tradeoff between why one uses a tool
| and any tendency to fascinate on the tool or process of using a
| tool. The use, the purpose, the goal outside and originally to
| want any tool has always been my preference. To see the forest
| when among trees, to see a purpose and path through. Not to navel
| gaze at the existence of tools in preference to using them beyond
| pontificating their existence. This then extends to shaking my
| head at the swelled population of developer influencers that over
| fascinate on tools, appearing to do that in preference of
| anything else.
|
| This confuses a tool with knowledge itself. smh.
| zackify wrote:
| This is why I made revect. I even have an obsidian plugin in
| progress.
|
| The goal to index your obsidian and also persist anything from
| llm chats, and browsing history.
|
| To your own sqlite database so you can still own your data across
| providers.
|
| I'm sure someone with much more time than me will win with a
| better version of it
|
| https://github.com/zackify/revect
| thorum wrote:
| If you're interested in preserving your ability to think for
| yourself in the age of AI, I recommend Henrik Karlsson's blog
| Escaping Flatland. While not directly about AI, his articles
| "Cultivating a state of mind where new ideas are born" [1] and
| "Childhoods of exceptional people" [2] explore similar themes of
| how to train your mind to have original ideas and learn to solve
| problems on your own.
|
| [1] https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/good-ideas
|
| [2] https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/p/childhoods
|
| https://www.henrikkarlsson.xyz/archive?sort=top
| absurdo wrote:
| Unfortunately a lot of this kind of writing teeter-totters
| between being a massive coping strategy or a circlejerk. Using
| the lives of exceptional people as a blueprint for the everyday
| person is ridiculous. I'm reminded of people following
| professional bodybuilding schedules and meal plans to lose a
| bit of weight, getting caught up in nonsense like "cheat meals"
| and "cheat days." Likewise, if you don't have any exceptional
| abilities such that your creativity will advance a field
| forward, you may want to be reasonable with your expectations
| and outcomes of what you actually can apply your time and
| energy to.
|
| At least read Gatto's work in education because he knows what
| he's talking about as an actual teacher who has put more
| students through schooling than anyone writing these articles.
| His work contradicts some of this because he studied very non-
| exceptional childhoods of exceptional people. He has a better
| answer to how to think for oneself as well.
|
| To actually get to the bottom of things: I think most normal
| folks are concerned more about getting by and making decent
| money in "the age of AI" than they are about being brilliant
| whizkid prodigies coming up with original ideas. A lot of those
| end up being poor anyway. But the desire to live a quality life
| is a more universal thing. No amount of "mind training" will
| help here. Just steer clear of paths that AI can dominate
| (they're expanding), and failing that, use it to your advantage
| as best as you can.
|
| Right now working with one's hands seems to be in vogue because
| it's one of those things that people are unaware of is actually
| dominated by robotics in the industrial/manufacturing sectors,
| so the ignorance there can probably get people through some
| hard times. But eventually even that will be shown for what it
| is and we'll have to find better ways to spend our time.
| jplusequalt wrote:
| >Right now working with one's hands seems to be in vogue
|
| Working with one's hands has been in vogue since the dawn of
| human history.
| thorum wrote:
| > To actually get to the bottom of things: I think most
| normal folks are concerned more about getting by and making
| decent money in "the age of AI" than they are about being
| brilliant whizkid prodigies coming up with original ideas. A
| lot of those end up being poor anyway. But the desire to live
| a quality life is a more universal thing. No amount of "mind
| training" will help here. Just steer clear of paths that AI
| can dominate (they're expanding), and failing that, use it to
| your advantage as best as you can.
|
| In my experience most people working on this are attempting
| variations on a handful of generic ideas. Most AI startups
| are fairly uninspired "XYZ but with AI chat" type things or
| ideas that have no staying power because Claude 7 will one-
| shot the whole product with a prompt. Succeeding here in the
| long run means doing something truly different and new and
| interesting and that's what the linked articles are about.
| sph wrote:
| Thanks for the links, but just a note. The thesis of being
| alone is not enough to be creative in this day and age. As
| advice, it worked quite well before the advent of modern
| technology, so the oft-quoted works on solitude from Nietzsche,
| Jung, etc. just don't mention a state of being that was quite
| commonplace at the time, but has practically disappeared: the
| long hours of contemplation, which for the modern philosopher
| Byung-Chul Han are the crucial component of creativity; it can
| only express itself when we're steeped in boredom and non-
| activity for a long enough time. We have completely eliminated
| it in the past 100 years with radio, TV and now by staring at
| our screens all day, to work, and to "relax." We do not
| contemplate the world anymore, we do not let ourselves be
| spontaneously creative.
|
| I recommend Byung-Chul Han's books _The Burnout Society_ and
| _Vita contemplativa: In praise of inactivity_ for a short but
| deep dive into this aspect we're rapidly losing.
|
| (I have just finished reading both books and I quite enjoyed
| the main thesis, though thick with philosophical discourse at
| times. Thankfully, they are quite short, not even reaching 100
| pages so they don't overstay their welcome)
| thorum wrote:
| Thanks for the recommendations and I agree completely.
|
| There's some hope, we can get better at this even in small
| ways by carving out pockets of time away from phones and
| notifications and other external distractions and inputs.
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