Ask HN: Do you also "hoard" notes/links but struggle to turn them into actions?

Capture vs. Retrieval: Where Systems Break Down

• Many people hoard links/notes but almost never revisit them; the bottleneck is recall and re-entry, not capture.
• Core pain: “right thing at the right time” – knowing which old note, link, email, or chat matters for the current project.
• Several realize they don’t need better organization so much as less intake or stronger filters at capture time.

Search, Semantics, and Re‑Entry

• A big camp just wants “grep++”: fast, local, fuzzy/semantic search over plain text, markdown, bookmarks, and other files.
• Obsidian/Logseq users want better semantic search/RAG over their vaults, but report current plugins as brittle, noisy, or slow.
• Some useful patterns emerge: daily “root” notes showing recent/favorite items; Logseq/PKM exports into LLMs for topic summaries; scripts that consolidate everything under a wikilink into a brief.

AI, Automation, and Privacy Constraints

• Strong bias toward local-first, open-source, self-hosted; “no cloud, no third-party access” is a hard line for many.
• Latency and resource usage matter: long indexing jobs or slow LLM calls are considered “not zero setup”.
• Preferences split: some want proactive, chatty “second brain” pushes; many others insist on pull-based, quiet tools and find suggestions/notifications distracting or annoying.
• Hard “no”s: hallucinations without clear evidence, opaque pricing (especially per-task billing), and tools that can’t export data in plain formats.

Workflows, Rituals, and Simple Systems

• Several argue habits beat tools: weekly/daily reviews, ruthless pruning, and “process each note once” prevent graveyards better than any app.
• Simple workflows (text files + grep, org-mode, Kanban boards, paper notebooks) are reported as “good enough” and often preferred over complex PKM stacks.
• Collaboration (shared wikis, kanban, Relay-style Obsidian setups) introduces social accountability that naturally discourages hoarding and forces clarity.

Different Roles of Notes & Skepticism About “Second Brains”

• For many, notes are memory aids, emotional processing, or inspiration “swipe files,” not task engines; they’re valuable even if never re-read.
• Others keep tightly action-oriented systems where anything worth keeping becomes a scheduled item or explicit workflow step.
• Several view “second brain” optimization as digital hoarding or procrastination-by-organization; the real win is shipping outcomes, not perfect archives.