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Show HN: BrainTool – Beyond Bookmarks, a Topic Manager for your online life

10 points by tconfrey ↗ HN
Long time looker, first time Show-er here!

I built the initial BrainTool to scratch a personal itch - to unify my bookmarks and online resources with text-based notes. I've spent the last several months iterating on it with feedback from early adopters and UX volunteers. It's finally at the point where I feel confident enough to seek this communities feedback.

BrainTool is a browser extension that makes it easy to save pages of interest into a personal 'topic' hierarchy, along with associated notes. Your topics are shown in an editable side panel which can also control the browser - opening and closing tabs, tab groups and windows by topic. There's a 90 sec intro video here: https://youtu.be/7zvyvATpoVM

The above by itself makes BrainTool one of the handiest bookmarks/tabs/browser managers around, but the kicker is that all your data is stored in a separately editable org-mode[1] format plaintext file. Off-browser I edit my braintool file in emacs but I've also played around syncing with LogSeq, Orgzly and other org-based tools. If you're an emacs user it could give you a shallow on-ramp into the world of org-mode, if you're an aspiring PKMer it's an easy way to slurp in all of your online resources, if you just want to get out of tab hell and up your browser game - dive right in!

Its serverless so your data never leaves your personal environment. Chromium-based browsers only for now (Chrome, Edge, Brave, etc. not FF).

Landing page: https://braintool.org

Some articles on use: https://braintool.org/posts.html

Github repo: https://github.com/tconfrey/BrainTool

[1] https://orgmode.org/

12 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 39.7 ms ] thread
islaboi
Shout out to Tony. After years of looking for an alternative to Tabs Outliner, I have now fully switched to Brain Tool and it's working great.
Greenskid
I just started, today, to see if I could replace using Tabs Outliner, with Emacs, and came across BrainTool as well. So I will soon be putting it through the paces. I am happy to see that that other Tabs Outliner users have successfully made the switch already.
tconfrey
Hi @Greenskid, note that you can directly import a Tabs Outliner export file into BrainTool (Import, under Options). LMK how it goes and pass the word to other Tabs Outliner diaspora.
wittybrit
I'm also one of BrainTool's early adopters. After being unimpressed with OneTab and SessionBuddy, this is fabulous. Thanks Tony!
nikokre
Great tool! Keep it going!
eugenechen05
Awesome tool! I have turned to BrainTool as my main bookmark/tab extension.
codingdave
It is highly unusual for a show HN to be full of nothing but positive comments from new accounts, all not only saying it is great but knowing the competitive landscape. I'm not saying that you 100% are filling this post with your own marketing - it could be coincidence, but it doesn't look like honest conversation.
k3tonan
That's because he has turned to his early adopters asking those who are account holders to upvote. So I can only presume many of his early adopters don't have thema and have signed up. You can find our feedback at https://groups.google.com/u/0/g/braintool-discussion along with his messsage to us.

With that said, I feel it was un-necessary for you comment as such. If you had any reservation on the validity of the comments/accounts it should have been addressed to the poster directly and/or HN. To me your are violating, maybe I am too with my comment, the guidelines.

codingdave
> he has turned to his early adopters asking those who are account holders to upvote.

Ah. From those guidelines:

"Don't solicit upvotes, comments, or submissions. Users should vote and comment when they run across something they personally find interesting—not for promotion."

k3tonan
Where to begin...As most mentioned they have come from other tools. I too have used OneTab and SessionBuddy along with various others. I'll admit it was a bit of a learning curve for me and not by much. I went a step further since he uses org file I started using emac to view it and Android app to view them on my phone. You can't do that with the others. His early adoption of using the tab group function is the best thing he could have done out the gate at least for me. The linking of what is open and visualization in the BT sidebar is awesome.

So much potential. Tak a look at his Vision Statement/Overview http://braintool.org/overview. I am also appreciative of his responses to feedback and willingness to follow through or discuss. I don't expect him to follow every feedback.

Bottom line, take it for a spin with an open mind and willingness to adapt, learn and ask questions in his group. Definitely, I cannot stress, reading his links and watching his video.

Thank you.