I have been pondering what notes software to use.
Presently I use a combination of Drafts for quick-entry on mobile or desktop Mac and then Apple Notes for more detailed or longer-term storage or for images and rich text content.
I have seen lots of new AI notes offerings which supposedly “automatically” categorize notes but I am really skeptical that any AI can know how I am going to want to retrieve information.
However I have been playing with mem.ai. Its Chat feature can do a semantic search on unstructured random notes and then respond to queries such as
To Do
Buy HDD - Urgent
Jones Report - Due 10/3
Smith Report - Due 11/2
Schedule Kids appointments - Important
Smith meeting- Urgent- Done
Then I can do arbitrary searches such as:
What are all my uncompleted overdue or important tasks? (It assumes important is equivalent to urgent so gets both)
Create a table of all of my incomplete reports
It will find answers across my notes in mem.ai and give me automatic links back to the source
So this works well across both personal/work spheres. It does not require that I set up a formal structure such as Tana or Omnitask require. But it does support templates if I want consistency.
It also has a very nice webclipper. And you can email into it.
And you aren’t locked in as you can export everything to markdown.
Bottom line - mem.ai works well for my goals. The main thing I wish it had is the ability to easily repeat the same query. Its URL only accepts query parameters for basic searches, not for semantic searches. Similarly its API only acts on basic searches, not on semantic searches.
The only alternative I am aware of which can do everything mem.ai can do plus easy automation of repeat semantic searches would be Notion. I may go that way - but it requires a bit of custom setup to do it.
Tana probably could do it but it really is intended for use with structured nodes and that’s overkil for my needs.
Drafts and Apple Notes can only do semantic search with 3rd party installations and who knows how stable those will be.
So my question - Are there other alternatives I am missing?