Just for clairity - my point was that corporate attention etc is a potential issue when there are 2 products, especially if they aren’t so clearly differentiated that their features/functions and customers don’t overlap. Maybe Tana-not-outliner will be so different from what-used-to-be-juist-Tana that there won’t be any resource, engineering or customer overlaps (I don’t be;ieve this will be the case, but that’s just my opinion - time alone will tell). But there will be competition for management time and attention, unless the management team grows enoug to absorb the extra demands.
I admit that I’m sceptical in part because I’m disappointed. But I did spend a long time in many different organisations that were grappling with multiple projects and I did see the consequences. Management mindhsare was always a major factor.
Since the shift from the Tana team I’ve been exploring other options. I tried to make Capacities work for me, but configuring the system was far too cumbersome and limiting compared to Tana.
I haven’t tried Anytype since it was released, it didn’t grab me then, and I never bothered to try again.
I did try Notion (again), which was great for dashboards and relational databases. The iOS and macOS apps are really good now, a huge step up over Tana. Tasks and quick notes were still lacking.
Tana is the only tool that has really meshed with my brain and I can’t let it go.
There is one tool that came close, Thymer. It’s still in alpha, but if you join the Discord community there are invites going out regularly. It strikes a good balance between Tana and Obsidian with outliner functionality and databases. I’m not switching yet, but I’m keeping my eye on it as it continues to improve. There’s a recovering-outliners channel in their discord with a lot of Tana refugees. Seems to be where a lot of Tana users are moving to.
I found Tolaria. It is open source, built with Rust so it’s impressive in terms of performance. It’s specifically designed for object-based note-taking (no outline view though, just pure markdown files). Currently it’s desktop only, but you can use a Git client or some other syncing solutions to sync the notes to a mobile device.
Agreed - Thymer is the only one I’m actively tracking in this space now. Been around all of them earlier from Roam to Obsidian (keep coming back to this for plain md viewing) etc. Nothing stuck quite like Tana did. I still use it daily for my work needs as the team continues to actively support it and even if nothing more was added I’m happy to keep using it with the MCP connection to Claude.
Tolaria is the other one I use actively - its just nicer to view files Claude generates for me and the Auto Git sync is a nice bonus.
I want to resume using Tana, but every time I do, the voice in the back of my head asks if I really believe this is a long-term thing. I cannot believe it will survive. I cannot believe “new Tana” will have a profitable user base and even have much of a chance Old Tana was the right product at the wrong time. New Tana seems like desperation.
I have continued using Tana with some trepidation for exactly the reasons you mentioned. Everything I do with it now is with full knowledge that the rug could get pulled at any time.
One other interesting app is Vellum. Not released, still in development, no beta or anything yet, but it looks promising.
I have beta access to Vellum. However, the lack of a mobile client is a deal breaker. Instead, I found the app Tine. It’s upfront about being created by vibe coding, but I have been using it as my daily driver and haven’t encountered serious issues. It’s geared towards Logseq OG (Markdown-based) users, but as a Tana user it’s also very handy.