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Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

atomicapp.ai

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Re: Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

#31

Post by Lalabadie »

supern0va wrote: post #23
memjay wrote: post #20

> Not x — but y. Am I the only one who feels a bit betrayed after reading LLM text? I am not even willing to try out the app after I notice… which is a shame. At least polishing the obvious parts would help a lot and is not that much work.

As someone that makes regular use of the em-dash, comments like this are rather maddening. I still refuse to self-censor to avoid having my actual writing get flagged by someone as LLM written.

I don't mind the em-dash, but that whole front page is very much "We prompted ourselves a web site"

Re: Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

#32

Post by kenforthewin »

Lalabadie wrote: post #30
max-privatevoid wrote: post #22

I sure love when the local-first software defaults to a non-local option for its main feature.

Yes, hah. "Local-first, your data never leaves the computer! Except once to go to the biggest information hoarders on the Internet."

Atomic supports any generic openAI compatible LLM provider, including ollama, LM studio, etc.

Re: Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

#33

Post by kenforthewin »

embedding-shape wrote: post #24
max-privatevoid wrote: post #22

I sure love when the local-first software defaults to a non-local option for its main feature.

Somehow, in the AI world, "local-first" means a local harness talking to a remote model, almost never "local harness talking to local model". But then "open source model" apparently also means "you can download the weights if you agree to our license" and almost never "you can see, understand and iterate on what we did", so the definitions already drifted a lot between the two ecosystems.

Atomic supports any generic openAI compatible LLM provider, including ollama, LM studio, etc.

Re: Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

#34

Post by kenforthewin »

max-privatevoid wrote: post #29
kenforthewin wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you think local-first meant how a dropdown is sorted? OpenAI-compatible is indeed one of the provider options for Atomic. Ollama and openRouter are separate options to allow for easier selection of models from these specific providers.

The online documentation does not suggest that using a generic OpenAI-compatible server is an option, and it once again lists the non-local option first. https://atomicapp.ai/getting-started/ai-providers/ > OpenAI-compatible is indeed one of the provider options for Atomic. Ollama and openRouter are separate options to allow for easier selection of models from these specific providers. Why is this necessary over just…

It has supported local LLMs from the beginning, it was not something that was just tacked on. I don't know what else to tell you. Your assumptions are just wrong.

Re: Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

#35

Post by embedding-shape »

kenforthewin wrote: post #33
embedding-shape wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow, in the AI world, "local-first" means a local harness talking to a remote model, almost never "local harness talking to local model". But then "open source model" apparently also means "you can download the weights if you agree to our license" and almost never "you can see, understand and iterate on what we did", so the definitions already drifted a lot between the two ecosystems.

Atomic supports any generic openAI compatible LLM provider, including ollama, LM studio, etc.

But local-first !== defaults to local inference, right?

Re: Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

#36

Post by redrove »

kenforthewin wrote: post #5
bryanhogan wrote: post #4

Generally curious, how is this different from pointing Claude Cowork at an Obsidian Vault?

Biggest difference is Atomic leverages an LLM to auto-tag and a text embedding pipeline to drive semantic search - so the knowledge base is self-organizing. The bet here is that having an agent grep the filesystem is fine for a carefully curated, relatively small set of markdown files. It starts to degrade if you approach your knowledge base as a place to put everything: personal notes, articles you find interesting,…

So an Obsidian plugin? Got it.

Re: Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

#37

Post by kenforthewin »

memjay wrote: post #20

> Not x — but y. Am I the only one who feels a bit betrayed after reading LLM text? I am not even willing to try out the app after I notice… which is a shame. At least polishing the obvious parts would help a lot and is not that much work.

Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, I admit copywriting is not my forte. i'm a solo dev, I'm focusing most of the time and energy on the product itself. There are always 100 things I could be polishing for Atomic - social media presence, website, docs, etc. even with AI there just aren't enough hours in the day - you have to triage somehow.

Re: Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

#38

Post by kenforthewin »

embedding-shape wrote: post #35
kenforthewin wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Atomic supports any generic openAI compatible LLM provider, including ollama, LM studio, etc.

But local-first !== defaults to local inference, right?

I'm not sure I understand the question. Regardless of what provider you choose - be it cloud based or local - you have to provide setup information such as host, authentication, etc. So it "defaults" to nothing; you have to select something.

Re: Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

#39

Post by kenforthewin »

redrove wrote: post #36
kenforthewin wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Biggest difference is Atomic leverages an LLM to auto-tag and a text embedding pipeline to drive semantic search - so the knowledge base is self-organizing. The bet here is that having an agent grep the filesystem is fine for a carefully curated, relatively small set of markdown files. It starts to degrade if you approach your knowledge base as a place to put everything: personal notes, articles you find interesting,…

So an Obsidian plugin? Got it.

One can imagine an obsidian plugin of any arbitrary level of complexity, given it's written in a Turing-complete language.

Re: Show HN: Atomic – Local-first, AI-augmented personal knowledge base

#40

Post by kenforthewin »

zby wrote: post #8

Reviewed: https://zby.github.io/commonplace/agent-memory-systems/revie... It is the second llm wiki on frontpage today! I wish the scene was more collaborative - instead of everyone writing their own. But I guess this is the llm curse - too easy to start. I am afraid it will all go in the LangChain direction with VC funding designs that are not yet ready solidifying choices that would normally be superseded.

This is .. honestly a great synopsis of Atomic and its design tradeoffs. Thanks! Giving commonplace a look.
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