PKM Weekly - 2025-07-13
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.
Logseq
Mobile App Testing
The time has finally come. The mobile app testing is now open. Testing will begin with our sponsors, backers, and contributors before opening up to more users.
To participate in the mobile app test, please complete this brief form: https://forms.gle/nfefJv51jUuULbFB9. In the meantime, check out a preview of the mobile app from earlier this week.
The only downside that I see with the above is that Logseq has now confirmed that there will be two mobile app - the original md version and the new DB only mobile app. I fear that this will lead to some chaos. On this point, Tienson commented:
Yes, the plan is to have two separate mobile apps, one for DB graphs and another for file graphs. We'll maintain the old app, the app name might be updated to "Logseq file" or something else so that users can still use it until the db version has two-way sync between DB and markdown. The new mobile app test will start with iOS and Android later.
RTC Testing
The mobile was one thing, but the devs also opened (slightly - testing will begin with our sponsors, backers, and contributors before opening up to more users) the doors for RTC (Real-Time Collaboration) testing. If you're looking to achieve any of the following, and more, this may be worth signing up for.
Share part of your notes with family?
Collaborate with teammates?
Wishing there were more communities to learn and build together?
Being fast, local-first and privacy-first
RTC(real-time collaboration) form
What Next?
I guess with the above releases, the devs will be looking to (just speculation from my side):
Finish off and release the desktop version of Logseq (which allows both the old MD structure and the new DB),
Implement some sort of auto sync between the MD and DB, which would open the doors to a lot more people.
Implement some form of MCP in Logseq
Launch Logseq Pro
Look to improve their offering and start marketing themselves a bit more seriously to become self-sustaining.
Interesting times ahead.
Capacities
Readwise Integration
The devs communicated that they are super excited to share that we started working on the Readwise integration.
Ahead of this integration, they have put together a proposal and would love to get our feedback on it! You can find the proposal here.
It seems to have been well received, and many Capacities users are eager for this to happen sooner rather than later. How and when it will eventually be implemented remains to be seen. The flip side, of course, is that it will be a Capacities Pro feature, so it won't be open to everyone.
What’s New
Capacities are currently working on a suite of improvements around content views and queries in Capacities as from reviewing the feedback received, they identified that this area is the cause of some friction and frustration.
They have already released a few updates, available here. From the sneak peek I've had, there are many more amazing things to come. Worth keeping an eye on it.
What’s Next
With the developers working hard on views and queries, as well as the Readwise integration, a few items on the roadmap have shifted in position. The Smart Media (More powerful features for your media objects) and Deeper AI integration (Supercharge your workflows with AI) have been relegated from “In Progress” to “Planned”.
Shame as I was looking forward to the Smart Media idea, but hopefully this can be picked up again soon.
To address the above changes in plans, the developers are working on an updated 'What’s Next' write-up (last published in February 2025) to share their plans for the short to medium term.
Is Capacities still recommendable without the querying features?
OP posted, The querying feature is a must for my workflow coming from competing tools, so I'm wondering if subscribers have found it highly beneficial over the long term? I'm also curious if the queries feature was a main factor in subscribing for those that have, or if the product is still highly preferable without the ability to comprehensively query across one's knowledge base.
I guess it would be a pain to migrate all my notes only to realise that the query feature is a killer that needs to be budgeted for, or simply not worth the upgrade.
Worth having a read if you’re in the same boat.
Obsidian
How To 10x Your Notes: Obsidian + Claude AI Agents
McKay posted a great video on integrating AI to your Obsidian notes through Claude AI Agents. It is a long one (1hour) so be sure to buckle up but there is so much to take away from this.
Finally moved my theBrain notes to Obsidian
OP wrote a small Node.js script to do what I had completely neglected over the past few years: move my theBrain notes to Obsidian, and finally achieved it. Around 20,000 notes are now accessible to Obsidian, and he posted on this here.
What’s the most RANDOM way you use Obsidian that turned out to be EXTREMELY helpful
OP asked an interesting question on our use of Obsidian. Did we find something random but extremely useful and not just in the “standard” Zettelkasten - something unique to your life or work?
Lots of responses worth checking out.
TANA
Live Web Search is now baked into Tana!
A new update from the devs. Every time you use AI Chat, Ask AI commands, or AI Lookup in fields, the assistant can automatically pull in fresh results from the open web whenever it thinks that’ll make the answer better. This makes Tana the ultimate research tool, where the unstructured web turns into structured Tana data.
Time-sensitive queries – Need today’s weather in Oslo or the latest Apple earnings? The model will first search, then provide an answer.
Explicit searches – Add something like “use the Internet to find the latest information” or “check the news” to your prompt, and the assistant will head straight to the web.
Context-aware lookups – When you reference dates (“last night’s game”) or evolving topics (“current LLM benchmarks”), it’ll decide on its own to fetch updated info.
Try the new web search experience, break things, and let us know what surprises you. Drop wins, bugs, or wishlist ideas in #tana-ai-for-builders so we can continue to refine the experience.
What’s Inside My Tana Workspace (And Why I Love It)
Sharmarke posted their thoughts on Tana. After years of using Trello, they switched to Tana—a flexible tool that lets them organise work, ideas, and personal life in a way that truly fits how they think. Their Tana workspace now includes everything from daily reflections and habit tracking to project management and content creation. The journey wasn’t always easy, but building one small system at a time helped him unlock Tana’s full potential. If you value flexibility and want to design your productivity systems, Tana might be worth exploring.
Check out the full article here.
AppFlowy
For the self-hosters out there, the devs have uploaded the first batch of self-hosting video tutorials, each with a written guide:
We also updated the guide on SAML 2.0 to include Okta.
The second batch of video tutorials will cover:
How to Set Up TLS,
How to use Portainer with AppFlowy Cloud,
Using an external S3-compatible storage,
Use AppFlowy Cloud with an external Nginx Proxy,
Use AppFlowy Cloud with Traefik,
How to log in using SAML 2.0,
Install AppFlowy Cloud using Coolify
AnyType
Could AnyType be the all-in-one app? The team posted a quick video on From Read Later to Create Now: Organise Bookmarks in Anytype.
Heptabase
Few updates this week, including:
Chat: Ask AI questions using selected whiteboards as context
Double-click a chat preview to open the tab and chat sidebar.
You can now resize columns in the Chat app.
You can now sort results by relevance or time in the search results window.
Sort cards in the Chat app by the latest message time.
Remember the collapsed state of the whiteboard list in the Chat app.
AFFiNE
The mobile app is finally with us (at least for iOS).
Check it out here.
A couple of very positive reviews so far, including: Love Affine — its clean, elegant design feels clean. Beneath that beauty lies real substance: a powerful, cohesive blocks editor that stands out among knowledge‑base apps. Having trouble connecting to a very basic, https self-hosted instance, that connects well on desktop — looking forward to new updates
Octarine
MEGA UPDATE! v0.27.0 is out now.
Split Panes & Tabs Everything is a tab! A major part of the app has been rewritten to move away from single-view notes to a tabs & split pane architecture.
Notes, Graph, and Ask Octarine are now opened as
tabsinstead of individual entities.,Multiple panes and layouts are supported — both horizontal and vertical.,
Tabs can be rearranged in a pane via dragging them horizontally, or can be moved to a completely different split/pane.
Performance
Part of the update was changing the way the app interacted with notes and the internal database. Improved performance of file loads between tab switches to be near instant.,
Rewrote calculations for image/video loading to be instant and not require a round-trip check, causing glitches in the past.,
Improved performance of file tree for large workspaces to not lag when the sidebar was open during interaction.
Focus Mode
Due to the introduction of tabs, focus mode has now been revamped to be a dialog that takes over the entire screen rather than be congested to a small pane.,
Changed the interaction from paragraph-based (which could span multiple lines) to a sentence-based one for better focused writing (every period, question mark, and exclamation point acts as the start and end of a focus),
Reduced opacity of inactive/unfocused text, fixed
codeblocks and bullet lists not being hidden properly.,
Read the detailed changelog over at http://octarine.app/changelog/0.27.0
Thymer
Still no app, but the devs posted this cool gif. Built an AI database builder by letting AI access the plugin system. Just a test demo, but kinda wild where malleable software will take us.
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.