PKM Weekly - 2025-09-07
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
Tana Current with Matt and Brage
Office Hours no more, say hello to Tana Current ! Join us to know what we're CURRENTLY (get it?) working on at Tana - recent releases, upcoming features, tips, tricks and happenings from the community.
Matt and Brage are your oarsmen down these development rapids. Trust us to get you smoothly downstream of the latest changes to Tana.
Tana for Students – New student templates – Student discount
Know a student? Or maybe you’re a student yourself? We just released the Student hub template, designed to make studying and teaching easier with Tana.
Track courses, assignments, and reading resources
Record and transcribe lectures directly into your workspace
Draft assignments and publish the results
Use AI to summarise readings, extract insights, and prep for exams
Read more about the workflow on Tana Learn! And....
Students now get a 50% discount on all Tana plans – email student@tana.inc from your student email or attach a photo of your student ID to get verified. Please include your Tana account email and specify the new plan you're interested in! (PS: If you're on the previous student plan, you'll automatically be moved to the new plan)
Check this video out for more.
Tana Live Build: The Effective Executive
The Focus: Making Meetings Meaningful. Executives sit through endless updates — the challenge isn’t hearing the info, it’s turning it into decisions and outcomes. No matter the domain — finance, public health, logistics, R&D — the pattern is the same:
Capture raw meeting inputs
Categorise them against KPIs, OKRs, and success markers
Use AI to expand decision options and implications
Track decisions over time, linking them back to metrics and results. The Tana team will start with a pre-built example showing the full cycle. Then Matt will present a brand-new scenario to build out live from a blank workspace — showing how messy meeting chatter can become a structured decision-tracking system in under 60 minutes.
When: Next Wednesday, September 10th, 1pm CET
Where: Google Meet (sign up here)
Obsidian
Bases - Getting Started
If you are unsure what Obsidian Bases are or how best to use them, the you need to have a look at this great walkthrough by Nick Milo.
https://x.com/NickMilo/status/1959662898701369398
A FULL overview & tutorial: Obsidian Bases: The Notion Killer? From getting started to becoming a master.
10 Essential PKM Lessons from Using Obsidian Every Day for 5+ Years
If I could go back in time, there are 10 things I would tell my younger self that would have saved me countless hours of frustration and helped me get more out of my notes & ideas in my PKM system a lot sooner. Some of these are about Obsidian specifically, but a lot of them are about personal knowledge management in general and the mindsets you need to have in order to unlock the creative potential of the notes inside your PKM system.
If you're struggling with your Obsidian setup, feeling overwhelmed by all the possibilities, or wondering if you're actually using it effectively, then you're in the right place. In this video, I'm going to save you years of trial and error by sharing the 10 most important PKM lessons I've learned from using Obsidian every day for the past 5 years.
A few interesting Reddit Posts
I'm addicted. Obsidian is actually amazing for writing books :)
D&D worldbuilding! - I saw a post recently about how to set up Obsidian for worldbuilding, and expressed that they feel a bit clueless on how to do it. So I thought I'd share my project with you. It's called Chronicler, and you can use it side-by-side with Obsidian! Point it to the same vault, and it can turn your Obsidian markdown files into wa orldbuilding wiki :)
A Disaster Has Taken Place: Obsidian has Been Marked as Shadow IT by the Administrator. For about two years, I have been using Obsidian to structure my work and improve my workflow. For both my work and personal life, I have integrated Obsidian as a cornerstone of my daily processes. Notes, lists, templates, tasks, planning, everything working together flawlessly. This morning at work, I wanted to start the app, but received a notification that the program has been flagged as Shadow IT.
Capacities
Student Discount
Capacities announced that they now officially offer a student discount available for eligible students!
If you're interested in applying for the student discount, follow this link.
We’re now in a position to offer a 40% discount on our annual Capacities Pro or Believer plan for currently enrolled students.
Capacities for Academia: A Researcher’s Tour of Object-Based Notes
Capacities isn’t just another digital notepad. It’s a game-changing tool that ensures your research brilliance isn’t buried under confusing file names and misplaced folders. My own quest for the ultimate academic productivity app led me through a jungle of cumbersome applications, each one promising “organization” but delivering only digital clutter.
Check out the full post here.
Logseq
How I'm preparing my Logseq graph for the database version (and you should too)
OP posted: The Logseq database version will change how pages, tags, and properties work. Here's how I'm preparing my markdown graph to ease migration.
Some really great tips and advice. Thank you, OP.
Tana to Logseq
OP posted in Discord: Considering a Move from Tana to Logseq DB - Seeking Advice on Migration & Long-term Viability
I'm a new user exploring structured note-taking tools and I'm facing a classic dilemma: Tana vs. Logseq DB. I would be very grateful for your insights.
My Background & Goal:
I'm a law school student, and my primary goal is to build a structured database for my case law studies (e.g., case briefs).
My system relies heavily on structured data, similar to Tana's "supertags" with predefined fields (e.g., a #CaseBrief tag with fields like Issue, Rule, Analysis).
I use multiple devices (a Windows laptop and a MacBook), so seamless sync is crucial for my workflow.
My Dilemma:
I've only used Tana for a day, so my data is minimal. I'm very impressed with Tana's supertags and flawless sync. However, I'm seriously concerned about long-term vendor lock-in.
This leads me to Logseq DB. I love its local-first philosophy and the potential of owning my data. The new Properties and Tags features in the DB version seem very similar to what I need.
Check out the post for more thoughts on this.
Memotron
In our latest update to Memotron, we added support to clip social media posts from all social media platforms, including the following:
Bluesky
Linkedin
Reddit
Mastodon
Threads
Instagram
This includes clipping from Reddit. Find the little hexagon with a plus sign once you install the clipper extension. Please let us know your thoughts!
Heptabase
v1.72.0 - September 5, 2025
We’ve refreshed our design system in the latest version to make the app easier and more enjoyable to use. The biggest change is in the right sidebar: you can now open Chat, Card Library, and Journal from anywhere. When you open the Card Library in the sidebar, you can also click on cards to view them directly in the panel as a handy reference. We’ve also made many design and usability improvements across the app to give you a smoother, more consistent experience.
Right Sidebar: New design
Side Panel: New design
App: Design system upgrade
Refine the copy link button design in the whiteboard and card sharing panels.
Fix an issue where the "Failed to fetch" error appears when restarting the Heptabase app after the device wakes from sleep.
Fix an issue where the whiteboard context menu conflicts with the tab settings menu.
Fix a jittering issue when entering the whiteboard.
On the topic of Heptabase, check out this video from Tom on the BEST Note-Taking App 2025
RemNote
New Lightning Editor Engine!
Others
Wanted to give a shoutout to a couple of other apps I came across this week to increase their reach:
Collabwriting - If you’re looking for an easy way to save and organise insights, we’re like a simpler version of Raindrop or Readwise. With Collabwriting, you can highlight content, add tags, collaborate with your team, and save info from webpages, PDFs, Reddit, Ln, X, YouTube videos, plus import Kindle highlights. Later, you can organise everything into clusters/topics and search anytime, so nothing ever gets lost.
Clipbeam - A Tool that allows you to save any file, link, text / code snippet / voice note / etc. All these are automatically tagged and organised for easy retrieval in the future (semantic search). It also connects to local/private/offline AI models that get relevant snippets of everything you've saved, injected into your chats, unlocking unique ways of interacting with AI using all your data.
Thymer
Smooth WYSIWYG Demo
Smooth WYSIWYG part 3: edit rich elements like it's plain text. Like typing in nostalgic ASCII ART to spruce up notes, because why not
https://x.com/wcools/status/1963975065025892468 - seems to be a bit of feedback that the devs should just release, as there is a bit of a fine line between teasing and taking the piss.
P.S. If you have an interesting PKM-related app, please feel free to reach out to me (DM, Twitter, Bluesky, Reddit, etc.) with a link and a brief blurb. If I like it, I will happily post about it.
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.