AI knowledge base, what are you using?
Hey! I am looking for and app where I can dump everything I come across, (blog posts, social posts, links, PDF, videos etc.) and the app should automatically indexes and process the content. Then I would like to be able to use it as: - A knowledge base I can…
Hey! I am looking for and app where I can dump everything I come across, (blog posts, social posts, links, PDF, videos etc.) and the app should automatically indexes and process the content. Then I would like to be able to use it as: - A knowledge base I can navigate (e.g something like Obsidian, notion, wikipedia etc) - To be able to chat/query this content using AI. What should I look into? It's a plus if it has a behaviour similar to Pocket, where I can add content to in one click both from mobile and desktop.
Collected discussion
NotbookLM
Went ahead and DMed you.
This looks cool. Does it also cover the conversion part? Eg. Is there a way for me to give it a PDF or a link and get it converted to markdown?
Thanks I replied. I am taking a look!
How much knowledge can you store in it? Is it more of a thing you would use for a specific project? Or can you dump a whole large knowledge base on different topics and use it to discuss and query them?
An important caveat here is that DT is not a good choice if you intend to use a third party tool like Claude Cowork, Codex, Bolt, Alter etc for your AI. Since DT's default is to import files and it strongly discourages editing those files directly in the filesystem, working with those documents from an outside AI requires you to use an MCP. This is slow, limited, and token inefficient compared to simply editing them directly. In some cases, certain file types can't be edited at all via MCP. Other tools like KeepIt, Obisidan, Noteplan, etc will happily let you edit files in the filesystem and simply show you whatever the most recent version is. It really depends on your workflow. DT has its own basic chat, so you can happily stay inside DT and do some AI work from there. But DT will never have AI feature parity with something like Claude Cowork's desktop app or Bolt, so there will be many workflows that involve doing your work from outside the app, pulling something out of your knowledge base, then doing something with it. In these cases, DT isn't actually a great fit. You can of course simply index files rather than import them, but this has a whole bunch of other trade offs to worry about, and there's a reason its not the default option in DT.
Agreed. It's more a different usage than a caveat but yes you are totally right.
QMD plus Claude Code
I don't want to self-promote in a comment but this is exactly what I'm building. I can share the links if you can DM me or can post here if there is positive need.
Devonthink is exactly that. Drop nearly anything, it reads the content, index it and you can query it in a search windows, or a chat. It also try to found out related words in other documents to help you around. It can create graphs relating documents. And, very important it can use a Ollama local server to do your stuff privately. Big big drawback, its price that makes it more of a professional tool.
For me works: NotebookLM for chatting with PDFs and YouTube (free, pretty good), Obsidian + Smart Connections plugin for navigation, raindrop for capture. Also try Khoj if self-hosting is ok for you
Obsidian is great for this! David Sparks has just released his ‘robot assistant’ field guide and he switched me onto using Obsidian. I think Noteplan was also mentioned as an alternative.
notion for now, but most the time when i want to research something, i think it's better don't search from personal knowledge repo, just let your GPT/GROK directly search from internet
octarine ? Ariv? Obsidian? '?' means im not sure
I use Obsidian + Claude Code
I’m curious about those of you who use AI knowledge tools: you save a lot of data, but do you actually retrieve and use it frequently? I would appreciate it if you could share any specific examples!
I'm using Craft as a PKM and it does have AI features. I've tried a dozen. It's the best one I stick with.
Obsidian! works like a charm with its CLI
Obsidian + an AI assistant that can work with the vault will do great
I've been sticking to Obsidian for my knowledge base and just using local LLMs (like Ollama) with plugins to chat with my notes. Keeping all my personal markdown files stored locally on my Mac feels so much safer than uploading my entire brain to a random third-party web service.
!remindme 2 weeks
I’m using Obsidian to save everything and Atomus to keep in my memory (plus ai to query)
OmniForge Desktop. It's a 100% local though. It doesn't provide video processing but if privacy is your concern, it might be useful to you.
Claude code / cowork with folders structure and MD files. Which obviously can be indexed with Obsidian. I started with having my productivity system in Obsidian (noteplan before) and sometimes let AI look or process something. Now it’s the other way around mainly Claude code is my interface for keeping me on track running the reviews preparing my day and work on projects. Still debating if it’s better to keep this setup as the orchestration layer which tracks everything in MD files and connect with MCP to certain systems like Things for tasks, something else for projects. And finished notes in Bear. Like I currently do with email and calendar. But right now all is in Markdown.
I recommend Obsidian, and I use the Obsidian Chrome extension a lot. The main reason is that other apps lock you in, but Obsidian is a Markdown file, so you can point an AI at it using MCP protocol much more easily. Plus, you have a lot of plugins you can use to make it look the way you want, which is not always true for other apps.