PKM Weekly - 2025-03-09
A look at the latest Personal Knowledge Management PKM news from the past week.
Hi Everyone,
We are back with another episode of PKM Weekly. Let’s see what is in store for us today.
TANA
The ONE Idea That's Changing Notetaking
Tana's Supertags turn your notes Projects, People, Tasks – they make digital notes powerful and simple.
These AI Prompts Just Changed How I Take Notes In Tana Forever
Ev posted on using AI within Tana: Using AI with my notes completely revolutionised my note-taking practice. Instead of just collecting and summarising information, I now have a thinking partner that helps me develop deeper, more original ideas. 🤖💭
In this video, I'm sharing the exact AI prompts that made this transformation possible. These are my top 5 favourite prompts that I use regularly to explore, challenge and refine the thoughts captured in my notes. If you're someone who takes notes and wants to get more value from them, these prompts will transform how you think about and develop your ideas in completely new ways.
These prompts are designed to help you:
- Get unstuck when facing a blank page
- Challenge your assumptions with targeted questions
- Distill complex thoughts into clear, actionable insights
- Transform fuzzy ideas into fully developed concepts
Check it out here
Markdown Notes Migration to Tana Notes
Seeking a skilled freelancer to assist with the migration of my markdown notes into my new Tana Notes account. The task involves transferring all content accurately while ensuring proper formatting, linking. Familiarity with markdown syntax and Tana Notes functionality will be essential for this project. If you have experience with note-taking applications and can help streamline this transition, please apply. Your attention to detail and ability to follow instructions will be crucial for success.
OBSIDIAN
Why Obsidian?
A couple of similar posts on Why Obsidian caught my eye this week, not because of the actual topic, but more because people shared their use case and opinions of why they are using Obsidian.
What's so great about Obsidian - I keep seeing this app recommended and finally got it myself. Why do people recommend it, and what are the use cases? Do you pay for the subscription?
What Do You Use Obsidian For? - I've been looking into Obsidian and it seems to be useful especially when you have a bunch of notes and enjoy ''hoarding'' info. I imagine e.g., researches could benefit from using the app. But I'd be really curious to hear if you got some big vaults and what do you usually put in them?
Claude + Obsidian = Building Your Personal AI Ecosystem (MCP Servers)
How to break free from isolated AI tools by building your personal AI ecosystem with MCP servers. Instead of jumping between different apps and interfaces, you'll discover how to connect Claude to your essential tools like Obsidian, Todoist, and Linear. I'll demonstrate how this ecosystem approach transforms both development workflows and personal productivity, without the usual AI hype. Whether you're building applications or optimizing your workflow, MCP servers provide the missing link between your AI assistant and the tools you already use and trust.
Master Learning By Teaching The Feynman Technique Using Obsidian
By popular request, in this video, I show you how I actually use Obsidian & note-taking to explore a topic: The Feynman Technique. The Feynman Technique is one of the best ways to learn and improve your learning, through teaching.
I use the Feynman Technique in this video to explain the Feynman Technique (meta, I know), while walking through my Molecular Zettelkasten note-taking system in Obsidian. I use this system to create an outline for a newsletter, this YouTube video, & to publish to my digital garden. If you're interested in seeing how the newsletter turned out, consider subscribing to Recalibrating: https://paragraph.xyz/@wanderloots.et... (publishing the newsletter soon 👀)
I also touch on why Obsidian is the best app for my PKM system (personal knowledge management), one I've used for years to write over 200,000 words in my newsletter. As I use my Molecular Zettelkasten system, I show you how you can use the different settings, plugins, and templates to augment your note-taking, with a view to an AI-assisted future
CAPACITIES
March 2025 Release
Second release of 2025 with some exciting new features and improvements:
A better PDF viewer for performance and usability
New AI editor to interact with your content
Unified data view headers for collections, tags, objects, and queries
Calendar integrations are in beta for Capacities Believer
Other Improvements and Fixes
Video by YouTuber Wesley Anna
Check out the full changelog on the capacities website or what people think on Reddit.
Capacities Quick Capture on the move?
OP posted a good tip in Discord:
I often come up with ideas and things I want to do while in the car or while doing other stuff. In those moments I want to quickly capture something using Google Assistant without reaching to my phone. There's no real integration and I believe there doesn't need to be, because we already have WhatsApp integration. Here's my workaround:
Basic set-up:
Enable WhatsApp-integration
Add Capacities as a contact (my case "Capacities")
You're all set!
The simple workflow:
Trigger your voice assistant (eg "Hey Google!")
Say the following command: "Send a WhatsApp message to Capacities saying..." {your message}
Bang - you're new note appeared in today's Daily Note
PS: I often split up the voice command in two: "Send a WhatsApp message to Capacities" and then the message separately. I feel like the voice assistant understands me a bit better.
LOGSEQ
Lost Hope?
This week, there have been several posts on what people think about the current status of Logseq, these include the following:
Lost hope in logseq - I'm not entirely sure why I'm writing this, except perhaps to provide feedback to the maintainers. I've been an avid Logseq user since switching from Roam Research two years ago. During this time, I've become a Patreon sponsor and even developed/ported several extensions (without huge success, but I tried). I was genuinely excited when Logseq received funding, hoping it would accelerate feature development.
The reality has been disappointing. The latest beta release was approximately 10 months ago, and even that was quite slim in terms of features. I understand the team is working on the DB version, but as a developer with 10+ years of experience, this approach looks problematic - there's no intermediate benefit for existing users, no incremental deployment, just one massive branch that seems perpetually in testing.
Where to migrate and how to make it easy? - I think the question that a lot of people have rn due to the almost abandoned state of the project is where to migrate? I assume most of us already have a big collection of notes, me around 2k. I already read some comments for example people migrating to obsidian that said that it's been a nightmare because of the poor implementation of markdown in logseq. I would like to hear experiences where did you migrate and did you find the easiest way to transfer large amounts of notes?
Logseq is most certainly not “dead” or abandoned. The devs are focusing on the DB version, but I have to admit it is getting a bit tiring saying the same thing when there is no real end / communication from the team in sight. As tricky as it may be, I think the team need to provide more concrete updates and some milestones. At the moment it feels like a perpetual - “one day”, but no-one knows what they want to accomplish before that one-day arrives.
Having said the above, there are still a lot of people pushing for Logseq and hope that it achieves what the devs set out to do, but even the most diehard fans can only tolerate so much.
Logseq MCP Server
A Model Context Protocol server that provides direct integration with Logseq's knowledge base. This server enables LLMs to interact with Logseq graphs, create pages, manage blocks, and organize information programmatically.
AppFlowy
Hi @everyone, v0.8.5 is out with exciting updates!
Columns in documents are now available on the desktop app. Use drag-and-drop or the slash command to create side-by-side sections.
Database compact mode is now available in inline and full-page grids and Kanban boards. We’ve also made the inline view area dynamic, allowing you to view more data without needing to scroll.
Web: embed video, e.g,. play YouTube videos in docs and AI Chat (will announce in a separate message)
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where callout blocks couldn’t be deleted when appearing as the first line in a document
Fixed a bug preventing the relation field in databases from opening
Fixed an issue where links in documents were unclickable on Linux
Upcoming releases / WIP
v0.8.5-6: revamped AI Writers in documents, new floating editor toolbar, link improvements, bug fixes
Web: AI Writers, Columns
Ollama x AppFlowy
Web admin console
Password login
Mobile search (design phase)
AFFiNE
Any more need to be said?
Noteey
Noteey's Offline Web App Now in Beta Testing https://canvas.noteey.com/
You can try it now! Please share any feedback or issues in Discord channel, not in other channels (note: the team has limited resources to improve the offline web app in March, so please be patient).
Key points about the offline web app:
It works in browsers on any system. Data is stored locally in your browser.
It works on iPad too (though we did not optimize it yet)
You can export local copies to your computer and vice versa.
Desktop Pro license allows unlimited use of the offline web app.
Known limitations:
All local file operations are unavailable. This means you cannot import local PDFs or local videos.
Images are not yet supported in cards. but You can add images on the canvas.
We've just created and uploaded a series of tutorial videos to help you quickly master Noteey.
Check out our YouTube channel to learn more and get the most out of the app: https://www.youtube.com/@noteeyapp/
That’s all for this week. Thank you very much in advance for reading and I look forward to bringing you more PKM news next week.