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Show HN: Reor – An AI note-taking app that runs models locally

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Re: Show HN: Reor – An AI note-taking app that runs models locally

#62
post #26

This is a good reminder of why storing Obsidian notes as individual Markdown files is much more useful than stuffing those notes in a database and having Markdown as an export format. The direct manipulation of files allows multiple apps to coexist and do useful things on top of the same files.

Files seem less useful for small bits of information. I feel the urge to fill a file with a minimum threshold. A database makes more sense for that.

Re: Show HN: Reor – An AI note-taking app that runs models locally

#63
post #4

Does the future of knowledge management involve using lots of AI to organize pieces of knowledge? I think "here be dragons", and that over-relying on AI to do all your organization for you will very possibly (probably?) cause you to become worse at thinking. No data to back this up because it is still early days in the proliferation of such tools, but historically making learning and thinking and "knowledge managemen…

I think you want to organize your own knowledge graph and then use the LLM to find novel connections or answer questions based upon it.

But if you are the one finding connections in your knowledge graph, then the neurons are not only connected on your machine but in your brain as well.

Probably a moot point once we have brain-machine interfaces, but we're not quite there yet.

Re: Show HN: Reor – An AI note-taking app that runs models locally

#64
post #16
post #4

Does the future of knowledge management involve using lots of AI to organize pieces of knowledge? I think "here be dragons", and that over-relying on AI to do all your organization for you will very possibly (probably?) cause you to become worse at thinking. No data to back this up because it is still early days in the proliferation of such tools, but historically making learning and thinking and "knowledge managemen…

> I think "here be dragons", and that over-relying on AI to do all your organization for you will very possibly (probably?) cause you to become worse at thinking. Socrates said exactly this. But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom.” Thamus, however, repli…

Fair, but the difference is that "remembering from the inside" and "writing stuff down" are still both activities that you are doing. And to in spite of this quote, writing does make the process of remembering/synthesizing information more active – you are engaging more parts of the brain in order to think about and write down the material. We have seen this on fMRIs, and there is a decent amount of evidence that handwriting works even better for this than typing, due to the higher level of spatial awareness involved (that's the theory).

An AI doing the work for you is the opposite of that.

Re: Show HN: Reor – An AI note-taking app that runs models locally

#65

Great job! I played around with this on a couple of small knowledge bases using an open Hermes model I had downloaded. The “related notes” feature didn't provide much value in my experience, often the link was so weak it was nonsensical. The Q&A mode was surprisingly helpful for querying notes and providing overviews, but asking anything specific typically just resulted in less than helpful or false answers. I'm sure…

Which model exactly did you use and how large? I feel like even the best 7b models are just a bit too dumb for most things that I have tried. A 70b model or Mixtral or sometimes 34b seem to be adequate for some things. But those are several times larger and don't run on my oldish hardware.

Re: Show HN: Reor – An AI note-taking app that runs models locally

#68
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's very possible to have multiple apps coexisting using a database. Although I'll certainly concede that it's probably a lot easier with just a bunch of Markdown files.

Sure, it's possible, but whichever app owns the database ultimately controls the data, the schema, etc. The file system provides a neutral database that all apps can cooperate within.

[deleted]

Re: Show HN: Reor – An AI note-taking app that runs models locally

#69
post #62
post #26

This is a good reminder of why storing Obsidian notes as individual Markdown files is much more useful than stuffing those notes in a database and having Markdown as an export format. The direct manipulation of files allows multiple apps to coexist and do useful things on top of the same files.

Files seem less useful for small bits of information. I feel the urge to fill a file with a minimum threshold. A database makes more sense for that.

>I feel the urge to fill a file with a minimum threshold.

Honestly that's more you subjectively than database v files.

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