Do you use a second brain? On "AI for earthlings"

Tunca ÜçerOct 3, 2026

Do you believe in the second brain idea? I mean a system where you collect your notes and your reading in one place and then think on top of it with AI. Does anyone here really use one, or does it stay a nice hobby? I built one for myself and called it Brainless. It is not an app. It is a folder of plain Markdown notes with a set of scripts around it. I capture everything: voice notes and photos from my phone, meeting transcripts, books and articles. Every night the scripts compile this into a wiki. They write summaries, link related notes and check for contradictions. Then I work on top of it with Claude. When I ask a question, it searches my own notes first and shows me where each claim comes from. If my notes have nothing, it says so. When I need to go deeper, it runs a research round and the result goes back into the wiki, so the next question starts from a better place. It is open source: github.com/ezapmar/brainless-public I built it for four reasons: My notes were everywhere. I needed to collect them and go deeper. I want to think in a sharper way. For that you need knowledge, and it has to live somewhere. I have to make decisions. They are weaker when I cannot see what I thought before and where I was wrong. I need an assistant for daily work: setting up user interviews, preparing answers for the press, first drafts of blog posts. I never give it the main job. I decide and I write. It prepares and supports. I call this "AI for earthlings". Everybody talks about armies of agents. I find it more interesting when AI simply makes a normal manager's day easier. How do you use it? If you have a trick that works, I would love to hear it. And if you tried and gave up, I am curious why.