Sep 20, 2026

How I try to manage my knowledge (and use Alfred to do it)

What is PKM

For a long time, I thought managing my knowledge meant collecting things: saving good articles, bookmarking documentation, and dumping snippets into folders.
In reality, I was just hoarding information without actually learning it, and whenever I needed to solve a problem I had already encountered months ago, I still had to search from scratch.
I often fell into the trap of obsessing over tools, spending hours tweaking plugins, color-coding tags, and designing intricate folder trees instead of doing real work.
Every system I built eventually broke down because it demanded too much maintenance; missing a week during a busy work sprint left me with a backlog that felt too overwhelming to face.
I finally realized that for me, PKM isn’t an archive or a showcase; it’s just an external memory bank to help me compound what I learn and avoid repeating the same mistakes.

I used to try keeping my software engineering notes strictly separate from my personal life, but that division always felt artificial and exhausting to maintain.
I don’t live in compartments; the canvas rendering bugs I fight at my job, the gym routine I follow, and the philosophy I read on weekends all shape the way I think and solve problems.
My memory is far from perfect, and I hate the feeling of losing a solid conclusion or mental model I worked hard to reach in the past.
The biggest obstacle I faced was decision paralysis whenever I wanted to write something down.
Whenever I hesitated to take a note, it was almost always because I didn’t want to stop and figure out which folder or subfolder it belonged in.
To stay consistent, I had to make capture completely frictionless: write where I am, leave the note unfiled, and never let taxonomy interrupt my flow.
I stopped caring about having a pristine folder hierarchy and learned to rely on simple wikilinks and quick search to find what I need.

I keep my setup deliberately simple and local-first so I never have to worry about locked databases or software lock-in.

I keep everything in plain text markdown files on my disk so that my notes remain mine and easily readable no matter what happens to any app.
My daily note is my operational anchor; it’s where I log my active tasks, paste quick terminal commands, and jot down raw thoughts as I work.
I use a single weekly note on Sundays to take a step back, look at where I got stuck during the week, and pull out any lessons worth keeping for the future.
When my project folders grew too large, I struggled to navigate them until I started using native Obsidian Bases (.base files).
By adding a few simple frontmatter properties (type, status, area) to my notes, the Base builds dynamic tables and active work views for me automatically.

I keep my vault in a synced Google Drive directory so I don’t have to pay for extra sync subscriptions.
It keeps my desktop and phone aligned in the background without needing manual transfers.
It gives me offline peace of mind; I can write while on a walk or traveling, and everything reconciles once I reconnect.

I don’t want an AI writing my thoughts, drafting my reflections, or telling me how to live; my opinions and journals need to be genuinely mine.
I treat the AI agent like Alfred, Batman’s butler: a quiet steward who cleans the desk, puts the files away, and handles the chores so I can stay focused on thinking.
When I’m in the zone, I often dump loose files and pasted screenshots right into the vault without filing them properly.
Instead of feeling guilty about the mess, I let my agent scan those loose files, attach the right frontmatter properties, and move them into the appropriate project folders.
The agent interfaces directly with Obsidian through its CLI to reload caches and make sure my database views stay fresh.
At the end of the week, I can ask the agent to scan my daily notes, pull out the technical roadblocks I ran into, and help me seed my weekly debrief so my learnings don’t get buried.
Having this assistant turned knowledge management from a chore that caused me guilt into a sustainable, background habit that actually supports my life.