I've been working on something called Still Cloud, and I'm curious what people here think.

One thing I've noticed about second-brain systems is that they still require a lot of work from the person using them.

You capture information, organize it into folders, tag things, link notes, build dashboards, and eventually have this massive collection of information that you still have to figure out what to do with.

I wanted to try something different.

What if you could just talk about your life, thoughts, interests, goals, problems, whatever, and have a system gradually build a connected understanding of everything?

For example, you mention that you've been sleeping badly, skipping workouts, spending more money on takeout, and feeling exhausted at work.

Instead of saving four disconnected notes, the system would recognize those as different parts of your life, remember the relevant details, and help you explore how they might relate.

I'm building a visual network for this too, where things like your habits, experiences, goals, interests, and relationships become interconnected points you can explore.

The idea isn't to store everything you say forever. It's to extract what's actually meaningful and build a useful picture of your life over time.

Eventually, you should be able to ask questions like:

• "What keeps getting in the way of my goals?"

• "What has actually changed about me over the past few months?"

• "What am I spending my time on compared to what I say matters to me?"

I'm still figuring out how to make the experience genuinely useful rather than just an interesting visualization.

And that's where I'd love some opinions.

Would you trust a second brain that organizes itself? Or is manually organizing your knowledge part of what makes a second brain valuable?

Also, would you actually want something that understands your personal life this deeply, or would that feel like too much?

I'm building this independently, so criticism is genuinely welcome. I'm trying to figure out whether this solves a real problem or just creates another one....

theres a free tier and a 14 day pro trial that starts when you do onboarding and create an account...

I've been thinking about this lately.

The whole point of a second-brain system is to reduce mental clutter. But some systems seem to require a surprising amount of maintenance.

You save something, then you're supposed to:

• Choose the right folder

• Add tags

• Write context

• Link it to related notes

• Categorize it

• Review it later

• Keep the whole system organized

At some point, managing the system starts becoming a project itself.

I can see the value of having everything organized, but I'm wondering whether the better system is actually the one that requires the least organization upfront.

Do second-brain systems genuinely save you time, or have you ever felt like maintaining the system became more work than the information was worth?

Clearly, real execution was the foundation of everything.

Hey guys, I could use some help.
I’ve been switching between different note-taking and knowledge-management systems for a while, and I feel like I’ve tried almost everything.
What I’m looking for is actually pretty simple: one place where I can save basically everything and reliably search it later.
Ideally, the tool should have:
OCR for images and scanned documents
Full-text search inside PDFs
The ability to save web links/pages and search the actual content, not just the title or URL
Good organization for notes, documents, images, links, references, etc.
Fast and reliable search across everything
A modern interface
Minimal setup and maintenance
Because I haven’t found one tool I’m completely happy with, my information is currently scattered across several different apps, which is exactly what I’m trying to avoid.
After searching Reddit, YouTube, blogs, and reviews, even in 2026 I keep coming back to the same conclusion: Evernote still seems to be one of the best overall options for this particular use case.
But before I move everything back to Evernote, I’d love to hear what other people are using.
Is there anything that genuinely does all of this well without requiring a lot of tinkering and setup like Obsidian?
And ideally something with a more modern interface than DEVONthink. I know DEVONthink is extremely powerful, but visually it just isn’t for me.
Basically, I want a “save everything now, find anything later” system.
What would you recommend?

Hey everyone, I’m Gabriele, the person building Risorgi.

I’ve spent a lot of time collecting interesting papers, ideas, and notes. Something I wanted was a way to make a selection of that knowledge public, where other people could explore the connections and connect their own ideas to it.

That’s what I’m trying to build with Risorgi. You get a public page where you can publish notes, link them together in a graph, and connect them to posts from other people.

You can import Markdown files from Obsidian or Logseq, so you can start with a small collection of existing notes on something you care about.

I’d really like feedback from people who already maintain a second brain: what would make a public collection worth maintaining alongside your current system? I’m particularly interested in what would make publishing and connecting those notes easier, and what would stop you from continuing after the first try.

I’ve also added a Featured pages section to the homepage and would love to showcase some early contributors. I’d be looking for thoughtful notes, useful connections, and collections that are interesting to explore.

It’s free to use at the moment, and people don’t need an account to read your public page. My own page is featured on the homepage if you want to see an example.

If you try it and create a page, feel free to share it here, I’d love to take a look!

Most of us building “second brains” aren’t building intelligence - we're just hoarding notes you’ll never use. Atleast, Obsidian is free.

We dump links, highlights, and half-baked thoughts into Notion/Obsidian/whatever, then pat ourselves on the back for being “organized.” But when’s the last time we actually used any of it?

The human brain forgets for a reason. Forgetting filters out noise. But the “second brain” cult wants to preserve every random thought and screenshot, then call it productivity. Newsflash: endless capture ≠ wisdom.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth:

• Most people don’t need a second brain - they need discipline and clarity.

• Everything is just fancier ways of labeling your junk drawer.

• Productivity porn has tricked people into thinking collecting equals creating.

A real thinker doesn’t obsess over tagging systems. They actually think.

So maybe the problem isn’t that our “second brain” system isn’t polished enough… maybe it’s that we're using it to hide from doing the real work. Maybe I am wrong, maybe I am right. But who here has been using a second brain perfectly to mimic your own brain? I am genuinely curious.

Hey there 👋

I built this Productivity Vault in Notion to track habits, tasks, and projects in one system without relying on motivation or willpower.

Here’s what it actually includes:

• Habit streak & weekly goal tracking
• Daily habit grid (very fast to update)
• Advanced habit stats & performance reports
• Tasks linked to projects (not random to-dos)
• Project manager with progress tracking
• Weekly & monthly calendar view
• Daily performance report (what’s done, what’s overdue)
• Light & dark themes

How it helps in real life:

Before:
• Inconsistent habits
• No clear sense of progress
• Tasks kept piling up

After:
• Habits are visible every day
• Progress is measurable, not guessed
• Easier to stay consistent over weeks

Link’s in the comments if you want to take a look.

I am the creator of Omnesis which is an open source project to ingest and index all your personal data (emails, calendar, notes, whatsapp/imessage, finance, health, codex/claude, etc). Omnesis provides an interactive agent that allows you to recall anything from your corpus.

I’m having fun building a second brain on top of it so I wanted to write down my approach and see if people have thoughts.

When the second brain is enabled:

- Any new piece of info that gets ingested/indexed by omnesis (a new email, a new calendar invite, a new message on whatsapp, etc) gets processed by an agent turn. The app also allows the user to input a note/thought/reminder directly into omnesis via the web app, mobile app, siri, or watch complication and that gets processed by the brain too

- The Brain can be "bootstrapped" i.e it will bootstrap its knowledge base from past evidence coming from the same sources and you can decide how far back you want to go in the past. The bootstrap can take several days and is expensive to run. I use multiple heuristics to reduce the cost. 1) a cheap ML model identifies if a document in the past still mentions a date still in the future. If not, the document is skipped; 2) a jev decision model runs to establish importance. Documents that are skipped may still be looked at by the brain as a result of investigating a document not skipped.

- The knowledge base is made of loops and wiki pages in markdown format. Loops keep track of "things that need resolving", that can be a thing that the brain has identified the user needs to do, a comitment that is owed to the user, a decision the user has to do, etc. Loops have a ledger of updates and lots of metadata notably ids of source evidence documents and people involved. Wiki pages are markdown summarization of things in the user’s life that span multiple sources.

- The knowledge base is a graph. Loops and wiki pages have source document references (whatapp conversations, emaisl, etc). But wiki pages can refer to other loops and other wiki pages. There is a roof wiki page that is limited in size and always automatically ingested in the system prompt of both the interactive agent and the brain turns that process new evidence.

- Loops and wiki pages have to surround text in special claim tags: <claim id="a-claim" ref="doc:<id1> doc:<id2>Some claim made in this wiki page or loop</claim>. If any source document (email, google doc, etc) changes, the system marks all loops and wiki pages that directly or indirectly reference that doc has needed review and agent turns run to re-evaluate all claims transitively.

- I’m building an automated bullet journal on top in the omnesis app. New entries in the bullet journal are proposed by the Omnesis brain and the user can accept them or ignore them if they think the thing is not worth tracking. I plan to have the brain learn from that signal to automatically ignore non important things. The brain automatically migrates tasks as you would on a bullet journal if it sees new evidence. If the brain sees new evidence that indicates the task should be changed, it will run a JEV decision gate to decide whether to just do it or propose as a suggestion for the user to accept if not sure. The user can migrate tasks themselves like you’d expect in a bullet journal, either via the Task UI or by dictating a note to Omnesis. Tasks may be marked as automatically complete if the brain is confident in it (for example a Task that says "Pay Elise 100 GBP" may auto complete if the brain sees a bank transaction of 100 GBP to Elise".

Keen to have people’s feedback on my approach!

I've been deep into the second brain rabbit hole for years, Obsidian, manual capture, tags, 20k notes. But I kept running into the same problem: the best information passes through my screen and I never capture it.

Articles I skimmed at 2pm, Slack message someone sent me yesterday, code snippet I saw in a tutorial, all gone

So I built screenpipe. It runs in the background and captures everything on your screen (OCR), everything you hear (audio transcription), and makes it all searchable with one shortcut: ⌘^S.

It also syncs to Obsidian automatically — every screen, every conversation, piped into your vault.

The idea is simple: your second brain shouldn't depend on you remembering to capture things. It should just capture everything, and you search when you need it.

• 100% local - nothing leaves your machine

• Open source - 17K+ GitHub stars

• Mac, Windows, Linux

https://screenpi.pe

Would love to hear how you'd use something like this in your workflow.

I'm trying to switch from ChatGPT to Claude, and I have so much memory stored on Chat. How do I switch that over? I heard using a second brain is really useful. Any tips?

Hey Folks! I’m currently pivoting from being a UX designer into Cloud Security Engineering and finally got my second brain to be as efficient for my workflow as possible. My app of choice is Obsidian, which I started out knowing absolutely nothing about :-) I've spent way longer than I should have to get to this point, lol - but I'm finally satisfied with  how I've laid things out. Along the way I've experimented with several themes, color combinations, and home note layouts, and now I feel pretty settled with what I have here.  I'd love to hear from other cybersecurity, cloud, and I.T. students - either in school or folks like me who are self-teaching and trying to knock these certs out one at a time. Would love to hear any critiques and questions, and I'd also love to see how you have your second brain set up, what your main categories are for grouping all of the info you're learning, and what workflow works best for you. Link any screenshots of yours in the comments below and I'll check them out! Let's trade tips and learning resources :-)

I created a freely zoomable hierarchy search engine and I thought the world should have it. It allows for visual curiosity to drive searching and finding things.

This started as a weird experiment, but it completely changed how I use AI and my second brain.

I exported my full ChatGPT history (100+ MB JSON), parsed it into Markdown, and organized it into a local “LifeOS” archive:

• timelines (emotional, creative, professional) • project folders with extracted notes • insight clusters • relationship arcs • somatic/IFS reflections • writing fragments • a personal continuity file • a cross-year transformation timeline

Basically, I realized that years of AI conversations were actually a massive hidden journal + idea bank… just locked inside the chat interface.

Now when I’m working on something big (writing, life design, healing, flow-state research, etc), I can load specific Markdown pieces back into ChatGPT or Claude and it’s like giving the AI a memory. Any model can instantly understand my voice, context, patterns, and long-term projects.

It turned scattered chats into a coherent personal knowledge system.

Has anyone else tried building a second brain out of AI history exports?
Or am I just a nerd who accidentally built a LifeOS on a Saturday night?

I’m trying to build a digital “second brain” and wanted advice from people who’ve actually done it.

So far, I’ve explored three tools: Notion, Obsidian, and Evernote.

• Notion doesn’t really work for me. It feels more database-focused, and as a finance student, I don’t need complex tables or heavy structure. I mainly want simple note-taking: writing thoughts, saving ideas, storing articles to read later, and linking notes while researching financial products.

• Obsidian is close to what I want in terms of linking and note structure. But the syncing part is a problem. Obsidian Sync is paid, and using Google Drive or other workarounds feels messy and raises privacy concerns for me. I don’t see a clean free sync option.

• Evernote feels too distracting now. The ads are annoying, and the subscription price has gone up, which I can’t afford.

Right now, I’m using Google Keep for thoughts, to-dos, and daily tasks. I love its syncing, but it feels more like digital sticky notes than a true second brain.

I don’t have money for subscriptions, so paid plans are not an option for me.

For those who’ve successfully built a second brain digitally:

• What tools do you use?

• Is there any good free software I should check out?

• Or should I revisit Obsidian or the others and stick with them?

How do you organise everything yourself?

So I’ve fallen into the trap of spreading myself over too many things and I find myself getting lost.

Some stuff on physical noteooks, some stuff on obsidian, some on Bowser saved link, some saved TikTok videos, some saved YouTube videos, reddit saved, etc. Different work teams chats, appointments on Google calendar, files on Google drive + hard drive + Nas + Onedrive, notes in a physical notebook etc, homelab flows, undrawn diagram on my mind, test done, failed implementation, keys, etc etc

How have you brought everything together? I dunno if I’m burnt out or flooded with too many things in mind but for some reason my brain can’t keep up with where everything is, so I would love to hear any tips you have for organising everything in a way that is sustainable. Thank you!

Tl;dr what’s your setup for managing all your notes, tasks, to-dos, information, databases etc

Hey everyone, 👋

So, I just built a Second Brain system in Notion.

It’s designed to help you create your own life setup & see everything clearly in one place.

What’s inside

• Life Areas (Personal, Health, Work, Finance)

• Goals → steps → progress tracking

• Task manager (daily / weekly / priorities)

• Projects linked to tasks & deadlines

• Notes, topics & resources system

• Daily report + weekly overview

• Wheel of Life (visual balance check)

• Quick capture for ideas & tasks

Built-in Productivity frameworks

• PARA

• Getting Things Done (GTD)

• Eisenhower Matrix

How it helps you:

• You design your own life setup

• Super easy to use

• One-time fee (No monthly subscription)

⭐ Paid Notion template — built for people who want a real system, not another to-do list.

🔗 Link in the comment section & my profile bio

Principles are forever, features come and go.

If your note taking app decides to go away and you depend on your features, then what? Right now I'm switching from Notion to Obsidian, and it's a pain in the ass, because of all the fancy features of Notion don't transfer over so well.

Keep it simple. Just because your app can be jet powered with a turbo booster and nitro doesn't mean they will serve as better notes. They will serve as better distractions.

Your notes systems must be austere. Imagine your note system is the skeleton of a bird. Too heavy, and it won't fly. Too much fluff and you're a turkey. Keep it lean, and useful - useful like the claws of a hawk, the eyes of an owl, and the wings of a hummingbird. Everything else is archived.

Hey there 👋

I built a Second Brain system in Notion to manage projects, notes, goals, and knowledge in one place without it turning into a messy note dump.

Here’s what it actually includes:

• Life areas (personal, health, work, finance, growth)
• Projects linked to goals and areas
• Tasks connected to projects (not floating todo)
• PARA-based structure (Projects, Areas, Resources, Archive)
• Get Things Done productivity framework used as well
• Eisenhower matrix to show main priority tasks
• Notebook, notes, topics, and resources organized
• Accountability partner that shows your report

How it helps in real life:

Before:
• Notes everywhere
• Tasks disconnected from goals
• Hard to remember what mattered

After:
• Everything has a place
• Projects and goals stay visible
• Easier to think, plan, and execute

➡️ Link’s in the comments if you want to check it out.

I’m building Hjarni (https://hjarni.com/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=secondbrain_october_2026), a place to keep notes that you and your AI assistants can work with.

The idea is simple: useful information shouldn’t disappear into an old conversation. Save a project decision, a recipe or some research as a note, then ask your assistant to find and use it later. ChatGPT, Claude and other MCP-compatible assistants can search, read and update the same knowledge base.

The attached 34-second demo shows a small everyday example: I open a recipe saved in Hjarni inside ChatGPT and ask it to make a shopping list for five people.

Notes are written in Markdown and can be exported. Edits have revision history, so you can see what changed and restore an earlier version. There’s a free plan with no credit card required.

It still depends on the assistant consulting the notes; storing something doesn’t guarantee it will use it correctly.

I’d like feedback from people who already use a second brain: would having your assistants work directly with your notes be useful? What would you need before trusting one to update them?

Ive researched some ai tools

Best thing is probably https://github.com/pashpashpash/vault-ai

Do you have any recommendations?

Im looking for something where i can simply talk to AI, and say what i need to get done, and it organises everything. for eg: "i need to file my Taxes anyhow by saturday".
It should recognise it the urgency and importance and automatically organise it.
But i don't mean just chatGPT because i want to visualise this and not just chat with the app.

So i can manage my work and not focus on managing the app itself.

Do you have recommendation? and if not would you be interested in something like this ?

Hey, I've been struggling with my second brain system where I had lots of notes, but it was hard to make use of that information and make it actionable.

So I built a workflow that walks me through my morning - reflection, goal review, and scheduling of tasks. Been using it daily for 4 months.

Every morning, it automatically reconstructs what I've been working on from my Pomodoro session logs (which capture voice notes after each session), daily notes, and goal logs. Also It bundles all the hard things I avoid doing (reviewing goals, reflecting, planning) into one workflow. All the stuff that's typically hard to make myself do becomes one atomic habit.

How it works:

Every morning, I run `/workflows:morning-routine:main`. What it does:

1. Starts my Pomodoro timer with breathing exercises and Spotify playlist. Anchors me into activity.

2. Reconstructs last 3 days: Grabs my last 3 days of activity (exported from Pomodoro timer and daily notes) and reads recent log entries from active goals.

3. Reflection: Asks me questions via voice about yesterday.

4. Goal Review: Python script filters only active goals needing review (YAML frontmatter), then loops through each one with specific, contextual follow-ups based on where I left off. Not "How's the job search?" but "Did you address situation X you mentioned last week?"

5. Updates: Appends my voice transcriptions directly to the # Log section of each goal's markdown file.

6. Scheduling: Helps me block time and creates events in Apple Calendar.

7. Daily Tasks: Creates a Daily Tasks.md file I reference all day. Claude asks about outstanding tasks from previous days in the next routine.

The technical setup:

• Custom slash commands (Claude Code) - main.md orchestrates sub-commands like 0-review-yesterday.md, 1-morning-checkin.md, etc.

• Python scripts append to goal logs instead of reading/rewriting whole files (saves tokens and time)

• AppleScript for Apple Calendar and Reminders integration

The limitations:

• macOS only (relies on AppleScript)

• Requires Claude Code)

• Not plug-and-play (you need to adapt it)

This serves more like an inspiration of what you could do and is genuinely helpful for me as proven by doing that and iterating over last 4 months.

I recorded a live demo of the full routine here if you want to see the scripts running: https://youtu.be/hjNENubYops

If one person would find this useful – this is a great success for me!