Show HN: My public second brain – 660 notes, 15 years, open source • Hacker News Board

Show HN: My public second brain – 660 notes, 15 years, open source

#1

Post by zazuke » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 7:42 PM UTC

Author here. ~660 notes published from a private Obsidian vault of 8,360 (3M words). Started in OneNote around 2011, moved to Obsidian in 2021 [1], imported everything with a Python script [2].

Notes are compounding over time, and that is where my writing comes from. The Semantic Layer note started in 2022, became a four-part blog series, then a chapter of my book. Materialized Views, One Big Table, dbt and OLAP were separate notes written years apart. I only later noticed they were the same pattern, and that became another chapter.

Publishing: add #publish to a note, run `make deploy`. Quartz + Hugo, rsync to my own server [3]. Code [4]. Semantic search over the graph [5].

[1] https://www.ssp.sh/blog/how-to-take-notes-in-2021/ [2] https://www.ssp.sh/blog/how-to-take-notes-in-2021/#how-did-i... [3] https://www.ssp.sh/brain/public-second-brain-with-quartz/ [4] https://github.com/sspaeti/second-brain-public [5] https://explore.ssp.sh

Show HN: My public second brain – 660 notes, 15 years, open source
ssp.sh

Re: Show HN: My public second brain – 660 notes, 15 years, open source

#2

Post by altmanaltman » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 7:54 PM UTC

I am not sure why I should care or take away from this? What is so unique about your second brain that I will actually invest time exploring it? Your RAG page says "explore your knowledge graph" because you didn't prompt the ai that it's a public facing app.

Re: Show HN: My public second brain – 660 notes, 15 years, open source

#3

Post by Vivek-KY » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 7:59 PM UTC

altmanaltman wrote: post #2

I am not sure why I should care or take away from this? What is so unique about your second brain that I will actually invest time exploring it? Your RAG page says "explore your knowledge graph" because you didn't prompt the ai that it's a public facing app.

that real call

Re: Show HN: My public second brain – 660 notes, 15 years, open source

#4

Post by zazuke » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 8:05 PM UTC

altmanaltman wrote: post #2

I am not sure why I should care or take away from this? What is so unique about your second brain that I will actually invest time exploring it? Your RAG page says "explore your knowledge graph" because you didn't prompt the ai that it's a public facing app.

The takeaway should be to show how note-taking, publishing notes with a single #hashtag (no formatting needed or conversion), and doing so over a long time can compound to help write-inspired blog posts or even chapters of a later book. Not sure if that is enough, but I thought it might be interesting. I did the first commit to my SB on GitHub since 2022-08-30.

Oh, true, the explorer is actually not huge, it's more an example where I tried to improve the usage of public notes, with the help of AI (good catch! :D). I probably shouldn't have included it. I wrote a full article with more details on how I did it: https://www.ssp.sh/blog/obsidian-rag-duckdb-sql/

Re: Show HN: My public second brain – 660 notes, 15 years, open source

#5

Post by altmanaltman » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 8:12 PM UTC

zazuke wrote: post #4

altmanaltman wrote: post #2

I am not sure why I should care or take away from this? What is so unique about your second brain that I will actually invest time exploring it? Your RAG page says "explore your knowledge graph" because you didn't prompt the ai that it's a public facing app.

The takeaway should be to show how note-taking, publishing notes with a single #hashtag (no formatting needed or conversion), and doing so over a long time can compound to help write-inspired blog posts or even chapters of a later book. Not sure if that is enough, but I thought it might be interesting. I did the first commit to my SB on GitHub since 2022-08-30. Oh, true, the explorer is actually not huge, it's more a…

No, i get it but I think you're kind of overvaluing the utility of this. Think about it - the best work by the smartest people in the world is available for free but most of the world don't even look at it. Expecting someone to explore your second brain is a bit too much to expect imo unless you provide a very strong case (say this was Ernest Hemingway's second brain, I would say there is value in something like that from a research pov).

Re: Show HN: My public second brain – 660 notes, 15 years, open source

#6

Post by zazuke » Sun, Aug 02, 2026, 8:17 PM UTC

altmanaltman wrote: post #5

zazuke wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The takeaway should be to show how note-taking, publishing notes with a single #hashtag (no formatting needed or conversion), and doing so over a long time can compound to help write-inspired blog posts or even chapters of a later book. Not sure if that is enough, but I thought it might be interesting. I did the first commit to my SB on GitHub since 2022-08-30. Oh, true, the explorer is actually not huge, it's more a…

No, i get it but I think you're kind of overvaluing the utility of this. Think about it - the best work by the smartest people in the world is available for free but most of the world don't even look at it. Expecting someone to explore your second brain is a bit too much to expect imo unless you provide a very strong case (say this was Ernest Hemingway's second brain, I would say there is value in something like that…

this is all free, open-source, and I'm just sharing, so no need to go there if you don't like it :0. you can check it out, or not, up to you. maybe helpful to someone else

Re: Show HN: My public second brain – 660 notes, 15 years, open source

#7

Post by altmanaltman » Mon, Aug 03, 2026, 7:11 AM UTC

zazuke wrote: post #6

altmanaltman wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, i get it but I think you're kind of overvaluing the utility of this. Think about it - the best work by the smartest people in the world is available for free but most of the world don't even look at it. Expecting someone to explore your second brain is a bit too much to expect imo unless you provide a very strong case (say this was Ernest Hemingway's second brain, I would say there is value in something like that…

this is all free, open-source, and I'm just sharing, so no need to go there if you don't like it :0. you can check it out, or not, up to you. maybe helpful to someone else

Just because something is free and open-source doesn't mean its useful or has any value though, right? And yeah I shared my feedback on a post where you specifically asked for feedback.