I’ve been going back and forth on this for a while and I’m tired of half-solutions. Every “second brain” setup I’ve seen either dies after two weeks or turns into a write-only database nobody queries. What I’m thinking about building: Obsidian as the vault (Zettelkasten-style linking, not just folders of markdown files) Claude Code for the AI layer — summarization, connection discovery, maybe retrieval Telegram as the capture interface so I can dump thoughts from anywhere without opening a laptop The idea is something where stuff actually resurfaces when it’s relevant, not just when I remember the exact tag I used six months ago. Semantic search, maybe some kind of context-aware retrieval that isn’t just “here’s your 50 closest embeddings, good luck.” What I haven’t figured out: how to make the AI layer actually useful without it becoming a black box that reorganizes everything into slop. I want it to augment the Zettelkasten structure, not replace it. For those of you who’ve gone down this road — what worked, what was a waste of time? Especially interested in: How you handle capture → processing → linking (the pipeline, not the theory) Whether semantic search actually replaced manual tagging for you or just added noise Any creative retrieval patterns beyond “search your notes with embeddings” Not looking for app recommendations. I’ve seen the Notion/Roam/Logseq debates. More interested in architecture decisions from people who built something custom. submitted by /u/tom_mathews
Originally posted by u/tom_mathews on r/ClaudeCode