Do you use a personal 'knowledge base'?

I have thought about this idea of a personal "knowledge base". There are so many important bits of knowledge that are scattered among things like Evernote (and its like), browser bookmarks, emails, blog posts, articles from newspapers, periodicals, etc. I don't know of any solution to this "knowledge hurricane", as least not yet.

Yes, I use my own topics map-based solution, Contextualise: https://brettkromkamp.com/projects/contextualise/. In simple terms, you create topics, attach resources (e.g., PDFs, markdown text and notes, images, etc.) to those topics and establish semantically meaningful relationships between the topics. The resulting map of topics can be navigated by means of a visual network graph. Contextualise is a MIT-licensed open source project.

I use (Apple) Notes on my iPhone and MacBook. They are always in sync. The notes don’t use MarkDown, but they are plenty of styles and features. I highly recommend checking (Apple) Notes out. I’ve used MS OneNote, which is also very good and available and syncable on/across several platforms. For me, (Apple) Notes has a slightly better UI. If you just want a cross platform syncable to-do list, and the above are too heavy, you might look into MS ToDo 2.0.

I have been using Notion and Evernote for this purpose. However, I am not really satisfied. Unfortunately, there is no solution that does exactly what I want and need.

Therefore, I am building my own system.

This is a question that comes up semi-regularly and a search of HN might yield threads that are interesting to you.

On thing that I haven't seen mentioned so far is an idea of mine which might be useless but I want to share it anyway: Maybe you should think in bigger terms and not consider a single application (or a set of applications) your knowledge base, but an entire computer set aside for this purpose. The advantage would be superior flexibility when dealing with a large number of different files and file types; plus you can use operating system features such as tagging on Mac OS X.

I don't keep a general knowledge repo but recently I realised that I've gone through a bunch of books on math, statistics and machine learning that approach the same topics in different ways. I started a "knowledge repository" just as a way to solidify what I already know. I throw in a bunch of definitions, theorems, formulas, algorithm explanations - from easy and obvious stuff to more advanced concepts. I use Jupyter for this because the markdown is simple but still supports MathJax/LaTeX equations.

I use Bear, which is a note app for iOS/macOS. It uses Markdown, it has all the features I need, and it is fast with sync. Because it has a really clean, minimalistic UI, I don't get distracted. This is my main tool know, but as most of the people who are even thinking about this, I'm not fully satisified. Separation of personal/work stuff is questionable, sometimes I feel I need better visualization (like mindmaps), and I regularly use it for todos too which is not the best if you also use a standalone todos app (TickTick).

I used to use Evernote to organize what I learn, but I was never satisfied. The reason was that:

1. Once I wrote something down, I forgot about it and never looked back. (No spaced repetition)

2. I had to launch an external application and switch to it to take notes. (constant context switching)

So I made an open source solution called dnote [0] that addresses both problems by (a) automating spaced repetition via email digest, and (b) minimizing environment switch by working as a CLI and a browser extension. Been using it for the past two years.

- [0] https://github.com/dnote/dnote

I'm building https://histre.com/ and I use it everyday. Most apps like Evernote and Notion end up being dumping grounds for notes and bookmarks. You put something there so you can relax that it is there if you need it later, but you never look at that again. Histre on the other hand helps you directly with the "collect -> filter -> decide" loop that we do all the time.

I use Anki at the moment. Anki makes it easy to search, recall and recollect all the details.

I've toyed with GitHub, Evernote and markdown files but the greatest issues with all these topics is lack of active recall and that fact that I never came back to them. With Anki, I've been spending time daily so it's hard to forget these topics. If I do forget something, I can always look it up in my notes or just go to the internet again.

I run a wiki at home with basically all kinds of specific configurations and settings. Little tutorials you get the idea. I like it although I don't always keep it up-to-date.

I created a Hugo site to keep everything in. It allows me to keep the speed of quick, simple capture in VS Code, but also presents the content nicely and makes it permanently available wherever I am.

I have started using a personal mediawiki instance with Cargo for semantic data. I realized that I wanted to have full control of my data, so I didn't like the idea of going all-in with Notion or something similar. I'm a heavy user of wikipedia so mediawiki just "feels" natural. Installing it is a huge pain.

I am finding that the system works well enough, once you get VisualEditor working. However the main problem is the habit of capturing my thoughts and work products. It's a tough habit to get in to.

Ultimately I want the wiki to be just one piece of a larger system that automatically organizes all my articles, files, mail, posts, etc. The idea being that I can work with whatever tool is easiest for any particular situation, and still be able to cross-reference all the information in a way that is useful and easy to search. We'll see if I ever get there.