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Public dossier section · @ben

sources

This is @ben's profile revision 1. The original date and editorial confidence below are attributed to its publisher, not independent verification.

Original credited author: Hraness

AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.

Back to the full profile · Markdown version · Original document

Published text

roam research: sources

the catalog — every source behind every claim, dated and typed.

  • roam research — a note-taking tool for networked thought — roam research, roam research (2019, primary). the product site and its own description of the tool.
  • the roam research white paper — roam research, roam research (~2020, primary). roam's own statement of the thesis: a directed graph instead of a file tree, with bayesian and collaborative ambitions that mostly never shipped. the page lives inside roam's js-rendered help graph; a readable export sits at heckler.roam.garden/@white-paper.
  • roam: why i love it and how i use it — nat eliason, nat eliason (2020-01-18, community). the article most often credited with triggering the 2020 sign-up wave; eliason later reported it drove meaningful referral revenue.
  • how to use roam research: a tool for metacognition — ness labs, anne-laure le cunff (2020, community). the 'tool for metacognition' guide that onboarded much of the first wave.
  • getting compound interest on your thoughts with conor white-sullivan — ness labs, anne-laure le cunff (2020, interview). conor's own framing in interview: compound interest on your thoughts; good ideas come from ideas having sex.
  • roam research faq — ness labs, anne-laure le cunff (2020, community). the pricing record: $15/month, $165/year, and the $500 five-year believer plan.
  • roam research: the limitless tool — the generalist, mario gabriele (2020, reporting). a long, favorable company profile published near the peak of the hype wave.
  • roam is a note-taking tool, and a dream of a better self — built in sf (2020, reporting). the feature that documented #roamcult as a genuine community phenomenon and traced the bush-to-roam lineage in the popular press.
  • a $200 million seed valuation for roam — the information (2020-09-11, reporting). the scoop that fixed the public number: ~$9m at ~$200m, roughly 25x the median seed valuation. paywalled.
  • roam research raises $9m at a $200m valuation — techcrunch (2020-09-28, reporting). the techcrunch writeup that carried the round to the general tech audience.
  • how roam research got their first 1000 customers — first 1000 (medium), ali abou el atta (2020-07-29, reporting). the 'low floor, high ceiling' product philosophy and the enterprise-first start.
  • why note-taking apps don't make us smarter — platformer, casey newton (2023-09-11, reporting). the marquee postmortem by a believer: 'i waited for the insights to come. and waited. and waited.' notes designed for storage, not sparking insights.
  • a note on the cargo cult of zettelkasten — boffosocko, chris aldrich (2023-02-03, community). the cargo-cult diagnosis: users follow the motions of zettelkasten for months, don't see the promised gains, and quietly give up.
  • why i left roam research after 5 years — yu-wenhao.com, wenhao yu (~2025, community). a five-year believer ($500 plan, $1k investor) leaves for obsidian: 'ai changed everything, and my data was locked in the cloud.'
  • i wish i knew how to quit roam research — investing101 (substack), kyle harrison (~2023, community). the loyalist counterweight: roam 'was not building a productivity app' while most users wanted one.
  • zettelkasten, honestly — notesnudge (~2025, community). the cleanest evidence audit: 'the system will surprise you with connections' is the least-supported claim; only survivors write essays.
  • moving from roam research to obsidian — mickmel (substack), mickmel (~2022, community). a representative migration note: price, privacy, and sync driving the move to obsidian.
  • conaw on sync issues and the state of roam — threadreader app, conor white-sullivan (2021-01, archive). conor's own january 2021 thread on sync bugs and performance — 'roam is far from done' — plus the subreddit friction it answered. captured via threadreader.
  • as we may think — the atlantic, vannevar bush (1945-07, primary). the 1945 memex essay every networked-thought tool cites as origin.
  • augmenting human intellect: a conceptual framework — doug engelbart institute, douglas engelbart (1962-10, primary). augmenting human intellect as an explicit program — computers as thinking partners, six years before the mother of all demos.
  • computer lib / dream machines — internet archive (scan), ted nelson (1974, archive). hypertext, hypermedia, and 'everything is deeply intertwingled' — plus transclusion, the ancestor of roam's block reference.
  • the curse of xanadu — wired, gary wolf (1995-06, reporting). the cautionary precedent: xanadu as the longest-running vaporware project in computing — vision shipped partially, ambition unreached.
  • wikiwikiweb — wikipedia (1995, community). ward cunningham's 1995 wiki: every page editable, every camelcase word a link that creates the page if missing — bottom-up structure made nearly free.
  • communicating with slip boxes — luhmann.surge.sh (translation), niklas luhmann (1981, primary). the slip-box as a partner that surprises you — and the caveat roam lived out: the box needs years to reach critical mass, until then it is a mere container.
  • how to take smart notes — northbooks, sönke ahrens (2017, primary). the book that popularized luhmann's zettelkasten for the roam generation.
  • history and acknowledgments (org manual) — orgmode.org (2003, primary). org-mode's own history: a plain-text outline mode born in 2003 — the grammar roam rebuilt as a product.
  • turn your entire life into a list with workflowy — techcrunch, alexia tsotsis (2010-11-04, reporting). workflowy's 2010 launch: proof a whole product could be one infinite, zoomable list.
  • about this particular outliner: outliner history — atpm, ted goranson (2003, community). the desktop-outliner lineage — thinktank, more, acta — that roam's surface descends from.
  • hypertext gardens — eastgate, mark bernstein (1998, primary). the first recorded use of 'digital garden' (1998) and a deliberate argument for irregular, curated link structure; tinderbox put agents inside notes in 2002.
  • the story of tiddlywiki — tiddlywiki.com, jeremy ruston (2004, primary). the personal wiki as one self-contained html file of reusable tiddlers — quasi-transclusion in 2004.
  • the garden and the stream: a technopastoral — hapgood, mike caulfield (2015-10-17, primary). the garden-vs-stream frame that became digital-garden canon: topology against serialization.
  • augmenting long-term memory — michael nielsen, michael nielsen (2018-07, primary). spaced repetition and memory systems as tools for thought — the intellectual neighbor roam sat next to.
  • how can we develop transformative tools for thought? — numinous productions, andy matuschak & michael nielsen (2019, primary). the essay that named the field roam came to represent — and warned that good tools for thought arise mostly as byproducts of serious work.
  • evergreen notes — notes.andymatuschak.org, andy matuschak (2019, primary). the canonical public note corpus: 'better note-taking misses the point; what matters is better thinking'; titles as apis; notes densely linked.
  • of digital streams, campfires and gardens — tomcritchlow.com, tom critchlow (2018-10, primary). the indie-hacker instantiation: streams, campfires, gardens, and the jekyll wikifolder — building your own garden before roam sold one.
  • a brief history & ethos of the digital garden — maggieappleton.com, maggie appleton (2020, community). the digital-garden history that places roam inside a longer tradition of public learning.
  • local-first software — ink & switch, kleppmann, wiggins, van hardenberg, mcgranaghan (2019-04, primary). the counter-ideology roam violated: you own your data, in spite of the cloud — the banner obsidian and logseq recruited under.
  • building a second brain — building a second brain, tiago forte (2017, primary). code and para turned pkm into a mass aspiration — the demand roam rode. eliason's verdict: 'roam is v4.'
  • tools for thought rocks — bmann consulting, boris mann (2021, community). the tools-for-thought community layer — a monthly series running july 2021 to march 2023 that neatly brackets the wave's peak.
  • file over app — stephango.com, steph ango (2023-07-01, primary). obsidian's ceo on why files outlive apps — in the agent era it reads as prophetic: plain markdown is the substrate agents already read.
  • obsidian — a private and flexible writing app — obsidian (2020, primary). the local-first competitor that won the pragmatists while roam won the evangelists — first beta march 30, 2020, free, plain markdown.
  • logseq/logseq — github (2020, primary). the open-source outliner clone (agpl, local markdown/org files) that absorbed roam's most cost-sensitive users; its readme credits roam, org-mode, tiddlywiki, and workflowy.
  • logseq raises $4.1m — logseq blog (~2022, primary). logseq's $4.1m raise from collison, friedman, lütke, and dave winer — explicitly on users 'jumping ship from roam.'
  • athensresearch/athens — github (2020, primary). the cautionary open-source clone: yc w21, 6.3k stars, unmaintained since ~2023 — cloning the graph was never the hard part.
  • tana — the all-in-one workspace with supertags — tana (2023, primary). the supertag successor built by ex-roam-community figures, launched on the explicit promise of finishing what roam started.
  • tana raises $14m series a — tana blog (~2024, primary). tana's $14m series a as an 'ai-native workspace' — the category's pivot to agents made literal.
  • the next chapter for tana — tana blog (~2025, primary). 'your graph is the context and conversations are your prompts… your knowledge graph builds itself every time you talk.'
  • automatically add backlinks using ai — reflect, alex maccaw (~2023, primary). the labor handoff as a button: 'decorate my writing with backlinks.'
  • mem's note-taking app plans to use ai — the verge, david pierce (2022-11-10, reporting). mem's ai-first pitch — 'a google search bar but for all nonpublic information' — and the memex homage in the name.
  • capacities launch thread — hacker news (2022-06-02, community). object-based notes: typed objects instead of pages — structure by type and relation rather than folders.
  • llm-wiki.md — github gist, andrej karpathy (2026-04-04, primary). the agent-era restatement: an llm-maintained markdown wiki as 'a persistent, compounding artifact.' 'obsidian is the ide; the llm is the programmer; the wiki is the codebase.'
  • graphrag: unlocking llm discovery on narrative private data — microsoft research, larson & truitt (2024-02-13, primary). microsoft's graphrag: llm-extracted knowledge graphs plus community summaries beat baseline rag on global sensemaking questions.
  • ai's trillion-dollar opportunity: context graphs — foundation capital, jaya gupta & ashu garg (2025-12, primary). the enterprise restatement: agents need decision traces — exceptions, overrides, precedents — captured into context graphs.
  • introducing the model context protocol — anthropic (2024-11-25, primary). anthropic's open socket between agents and data — the plumbing that makes agent-readable knowledge bases practical.
  • look ma, no rag! building agent-native knowledge systems — blog.pollack.ai (~2025, community). the links-beat-embeddings argument at project scale: index files as routing tables, let the agent follow links in two or three hops.
  • benchmarking ai agent memory: is a filesystem all you need? — letta (~2025, primary). the strongest counter-evidence: a plain agent with file tools hit 74% on the locomio memory benchmark — files plus grep rival specialized memory systems.
  • introducing context repositories — letta (~2025, primary). git-backed agent memory: markdown plus frontmatter projected into a real repo the agent greps and commits — roam's data model reinvented as infrastructure.
  • agents.md — agents.md (2025, primary). the cross-vendor convention — 'a readme for agents' across codex, cursor, jules, copilot, and 60k+ projects.
  • agent memory engineering — nicolasbustamante.com, nicolas bustamante (~2026, community). the audit caveat: production agent memory converges on small markdown taxonomies, and 'remember this' behavior is harness-trained — structure matters less than habit.
  • karpathy's obsidian wiki broke at 100 articles — dev.to, zaferdace (~2026, community). the counter-lesson: at ~100 articles an llm-maintained wiki exceeds usable context and the model starts confidently fabricating cross-note relationships.
  • why your second brain is dead — self.md (~2025, community). the bluntest version of the against case: 'the ai does not care about your backlinks… the expensive operation became free.'
  • hraness/wordcell — github, hraness (2026, primary). a knowledge base for coding agents built from markdown, backlinks, semantic search, and git context — markdown and git authoritative, indexes as replaceable views.
  • wordcell docs — wordcell.io, hraness (2026, primary). wordcell's docs: context, backlinks, and history per code path, installed as an agent skill.
  • sponge — a personal library for research — sponge.computer, hraness (2025, primary). a knowledge harness where agents research against a saved corpus — cite the passages used, check claims against the text — while people steer, review, and control release.
  • hraness/oh — github, hraness (2026, primary). an ontology kernel for agentic research: content-addressed entity, statement, assertion, and evidence records with an append-only operation log; indexes derived and rebuildable.
  • what happened to roam research? magic, then friction — buildfirstbrain (~2026, community). a representative 'what happened to roam' essay — likely ai-assisted, used for the genre's shape rather than its claims: 'connections you do not understand are not understanding.'
  • huffington post acquires localocracy — techcrunch (2011-10-03, reporting). the acquisition that anchors conaw's pre-roam history: localocracy — 'everyone is an expert about something' — sold to aol's huffington post media group.
  • umass start-up website bought by huffington post — massachusetts daily collegian (2011-10, reporting). the student-paper record: umass amherst founders, ages, and lead engineer jay voice.
  • conor white-sullivan author archive — obamawhitehouse.archives.gov, conor white-sullivan (2012, archive). conaw's obama-era white house blog archive — participatory democracy writing under his own name: 'an anthropology major … in 2008 founded localocracy.'
  • tedxboston — conor white-sullivan — localocracy — tedxboston / youtube, conor white-sullivan (2010-07-29, archive). the earliest surviving conaw talk video: localocracy as an online town common — collective intelligence a decade before roam.
  • ignite amherst talk on tech, media, and political power — ignite amherst (shared via twitter), conor white-sullivan (2009, archive). fall 2009, five minutes and twenty slides: 'an abundance of hope and the reckless confidence of a 21 year old. still stand by most of this.'
  • how i met my co-founder (origin thread) — threadreader app, conor white-sullivan (2019-09-05, archive). the first-person founding story: meeting joshua brown at 42, the prototype, the co-founder offer — and 'just started bringing in users from the public a couple months ago.'
  • the roam research white paper (mirror) — roam garden (mirror), conor white-sullivan (2018, archive). the readable export of the white paper — 'we wrote this white paper in winter of 2017/2018'; co-authored with journalist richard meadows, who became roam's first investor.
  • welcome to roam — founder introduction — roam garden (mirror), conor white-sullivan (2019, archive). the founder introduction inside roam's own public help graph — ending with his personal gmail and 'much love — conor.' the medium demonstrating itself.
  • 365 propositions — threadreader app, conor white-sullivan (2018-12-25, archive). the living thread-as-publication: hundreds of numbered daily propositions on thinking, consent, communal living, and the limits of thinkable thoughts — public thinking before the product.
  • why evernote is a terrible second brain — threadreader app, conor white-sullivan (2019-02-23, archive). the 45-tweet thesis the white paper itself links as 'related twitter thread': 'writing isn't just a tool for communication. first and foremost, writing is a tool for thinking.'
  • the zettelkasten thread — threadreader app, conor white-sullivan (2019-05-18, archive). 'the zettelkasten — it's like the gtd for intellectual progress' — the thread that tied roam to luhmann and opened invites, naming joshua brown as co-builder.
  • trust in the gatekeepers / all time low — threadreader app, conor white-sullivan (2021-01-22, archive). the continuity thread: 'trust in the gatekeepers / all time low' — 'the answer is not a new channel. it's a new format, a new medium, with a new power structure.' 'if had been no @localocracy there would be no @roamresearch.'
  • api, fellowship, and the roam fund — threadreader app, conor white-sullivan (2020-09-19, archive). the peak ecosystem-builder thread days after the seed: new backend, api and multiplayer, the roam fellowship (first fellow dhrumil mehta), and $2m for a roam fund — $1m balance sheet, $1m option pool.
  • roamgames announcement — threadreader app, conor white-sullivan (2021-01-23, archive). $10,000 every two weeks for three months to community builders 'whose public work pushes the frontier the farthest' — judged on intermediate packets and growing the commons.

Original source occurrences

  1. roam research — a note-taking tool for networked thought · roam research · 2019 (year) · original ID: src-roam-site · Other public citations of this URL · roam research

    the product site and its own description of the tool.

  2. the roam research white paper · roam research · ~2020 (approximate) · original ID: src-roam-whitepaper · Other public citations of this URL · roam research

    roam's own statement of the thesis: a directed graph instead of a file tree, with bayesian and collaborative ambitions that mostly never shipped. the page lives inside roam's js-rendered help graph; a readable export sits at heckler.roam.garden/@white-paper.

  3. roam: why i love it and how i use it · nat eliason · 2020-01-18 (day) · original ID: src-eliason-why-i-love-it · Other public citations of this URL · nat eliason

    the article most often credited with triggering the 2020 sign-up wave; eliason later reported it drove meaningful referral revenue.

  4. how to use roam research: a tool for metacognition · ness labs · 2020 (year) · original ID: src-nesslabs-roam · Other public citations of this URL · anne-laure le cunff

    the 'tool for metacognition' guide that onboarded much of the first wave.

  5. getting compound interest on your thoughts with conor white-sullivan · ness labs · 2020 (year) · original ID: src-nesslabs-conor-interview · Other public citations of this URL · anne-laure le cunff

    conor's own framing in interview: compound interest on your thoughts; good ideas come from ideas having sex.

  6. roam research faq · ness labs · 2020 (year) · original ID: src-nesslabs-roam-faq · Other public citations of this URL · anne-laure le cunff

    the pricing record: $15/month, $165/year, and the $500 five-year believer plan.

  7. roam research: the limitless tool · the generalist · 2020 (year) · original ID: src-generalist-roam · Other public citations of this URL · mario gabriele

    a long, favorable company profile published near the peak of the hype wave.

  8. roam is a note-taking tool, and a dream of a better self · built in sf · 2020 (year) · original ID: src-builtin-roamcult · Other public citations of this URL

    the feature that documented #roamcult as a genuine community phenomenon and traced the bush-to-roam lineage in the popular press.

  9. a $200 million seed valuation for roam · the information · 2020-09-11 (day) · original ID: src-information-200m · Other public citations of this URL

    the scoop that fixed the public number: ~$9m at ~$200m, roughly 25x the median seed valuation. paywalled.

  10. roam research raises $9m at a $200m valuation · techcrunch · 2020-09-28 (day) · original ID: src-roam-200m · Other public citations of this URL

    the techcrunch writeup that carried the round to the general tech audience.

  11. how roam research got their first 1000 customers · first 1000 (medium) · 2020-07-29 (day) · original ID: src-first-1000 · Other public citations of this URL · ali abou el atta

    the 'low floor, high ceiling' product philosophy and the enterprise-first start.

  12. why note-taking apps don't make us smarter · platformer · 2023-09-11 (day) · original ID: src-newton-platformer · Other public citations of this URL · casey newton

    the marquee postmortem by a believer: 'i waited for the insights to come. and waited. and waited.' notes designed for storage, not sparking insights.

  13. a note on the cargo cult of zettelkasten · boffosocko · 2023-02-03 (day) · original ID: src-aldrich-cargo-cult · Other public citations of this URL · chris aldrich

    the cargo-cult diagnosis: users follow the motions of zettelkasten for months, don't see the promised gains, and quietly give up.

  14. why i left roam research after 5 years · yu-wenhao.com · ~2025 (approximate) · original ID: src-yu-why-i-left · Other public citations of this URL · wenhao yu

    a five-year believer ($500 plan, $1k investor) leaves for obsidian: 'ai changed everything, and my data was locked in the cloud.'

  15. i wish i knew how to quit roam research · investing101 (substack) · ~2023 (approximate) · original ID: src-harrison-quit · Other public citations of this URL · kyle harrison

    the loyalist counterweight: roam 'was not building a productivity app' while most users wanted one.

  16. zettelkasten, honestly · notesnudge · ~2025 (approximate) · original ID: src-notesnudge-zettelkasten · Other public citations of this URL

    the cleanest evidence audit: 'the system will surprise you with connections' is the least-supported claim; only survivors write essays.

  17. moving from roam research to obsidian · mickmel (substack) · ~2022 (approximate) · original ID: src-mickmel-migration · Other public citations of this URL · mickmel

    a representative migration note: price, privacy, and sync driving the move to obsidian.

  18. conaw on sync issues and the state of roam · threadreader app · 2021-01 (month) · original ID: src-conaw-sync-thread · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    conor's own january 2021 thread on sync bugs and performance — 'roam is far from done' — plus the subreddit friction it answered. captured via threadreader.

  19. as we may think · the atlantic · 1945-07 (month) · original ID: src-as-we-may-think · Other public citations of this URL · vannevar bush

    the 1945 memex essay every networked-thought tool cites as origin.

  20. augmenting human intellect: a conceptual framework · doug engelbart institute · 1962-10 (month) · original ID: src-engelbart-augment · Other public citations of this URL · douglas engelbart

    augmenting human intellect as an explicit program — computers as thinking partners, six years before the mother of all demos.

  21. computer lib / dream machines · internet archive (scan) · 1974 (year) · original ID: src-computer-lib · Other public citations of this URL · ted nelson

    hypertext, hypermedia, and 'everything is deeply intertwingled' — plus transclusion, the ancestor of roam's block reference.

  22. the curse of xanadu · wired · 1995-06 (month) · original ID: src-curse-of-xanadu · Other public citations of this URL · gary wolf

    the cautionary precedent: xanadu as the longest-running vaporware project in computing — vision shipped partially, ambition unreached.

  23. wikiwikiweb · wikipedia · 1995 (year) · original ID: src-wikiwikiweb · Other public citations of this URL

    ward cunningham's 1995 wiki: every page editable, every camelcase word a link that creates the page if missing — bottom-up structure made nearly free.

  24. communicating with slip boxes · luhmann.surge.sh (translation) · 1981 (year) · original ID: src-luhmann-slip-boxes · Other public citations of this URL · niklas luhmann

    the slip-box as a partner that surprises you — and the caveat roam lived out: the box needs years to reach critical mass, until then it is a mere container.

  25. how to take smart notes · northbooks · 2017 (year) · original ID: src-smart-notes · Other public citations of this URL · sönke ahrens

    the book that popularized luhmann's zettelkasten for the roam generation.

  26. history and acknowledgments (org manual) · orgmode.org · 2003 (year) · original ID: src-org-history · Other public citations of this URL

    org-mode's own history: a plain-text outline mode born in 2003 — the grammar roam rebuilt as a product.

  27. turn your entire life into a list with workflowy · techcrunch · 2010-11-04 (day) · original ID: src-workflowy-launch · Other public citations of this URL · alexia tsotsis

    workflowy's 2010 launch: proof a whole product could be one infinite, zoomable list.

  28. about this particular outliner: outliner history · atpm · 2003 (year) · original ID: src-outliner-history · Other public citations of this URL · ted goranson

    the desktop-outliner lineage — thinktank, more, acta — that roam's surface descends from.

  29. hypertext gardens · eastgate · 1998 (year) · original ID: src-hypertext-gardens · Other public citations of this URL · mark bernstein

    the first recorded use of 'digital garden' (1998) and a deliberate argument for irregular, curated link structure; tinderbox put agents inside notes in 2002.

  30. the story of tiddlywiki · tiddlywiki.com · 2004 (year) · original ID: src-tiddlywiki-story · Other public citations of this URL · jeremy ruston

    the personal wiki as one self-contained html file of reusable tiddlers — quasi-transclusion in 2004.

  31. the garden and the stream: a technopastoral · hapgood · 2015-10-17 (day) · original ID: src-garden-and-stream · Other public citations of this URL · mike caulfield

    the garden-vs-stream frame that became digital-garden canon: topology against serialization.

  32. augmenting long-term memory · michael nielsen · 2018-07 (month) · original ID: src-augmenting-memory · Other public citations of this URL · michael nielsen

    spaced repetition and memory systems as tools for thought — the intellectual neighbor roam sat next to.

  33. how can we develop transformative tools for thought? · numinous productions · 2019 (year) · original ID: src-transformative-tft · Other public citations of this URL · andy matuschak & michael nielsen

    the essay that named the field roam came to represent — and warned that good tools for thought arise mostly as byproducts of serious work.

  34. evergreen notes · notes.andymatuschak.org · 2019 (year) · original ID: src-evergreen-notes · Other public citations of this URL · andy matuschak

    the canonical public note corpus: 'better note-taking misses the point; what matters is better thinking'; titles as apis; notes densely linked.

  35. of digital streams, campfires and gardens · tomcritchlow.com · 2018-10 (month) · original ID: src-critchlow-gardens · Other public citations of this URL · tom critchlow

    the indie-hacker instantiation: streams, campfires, gardens, and the jekyll wikifolder — building your own garden before roam sold one.

  36. a brief history & ethos of the digital garden · maggieappleton.com · 2020 (year) · original ID: src-digital-gardens · Other public citations of this URL · maggie appleton

    the digital-garden history that places roam inside a longer tradition of public learning.

  37. local-first software · ink & switch · 2019-04 (month) · original ID: src-local-first · Other public citations of this URL · kleppmann, wiggins, van hardenberg, mcgranaghan

    the counter-ideology roam violated: you own your data, in spite of the cloud — the banner obsidian and logseq recruited under.

  38. building a second brain · building a second brain · 2017 (year) · original ID: src-building-second-brain · Other public citations of this URL · tiago forte

    code and para turned pkm into a mass aspiration — the demand roam rode. eliason's verdict: 'roam is v4.'

  39. tools for thought rocks · bmann consulting · 2021 (year) · original ID: src-tft-rocks · Other public citations of this URL · boris mann

    the tools-for-thought community layer — a monthly series running july 2021 to march 2023 that neatly brackets the wave's peak.

  40. file over app · stephango.com · 2023-07-01 (day) · original ID: src-file-over-app · Other public citations of this URL · steph ango

    obsidian's ceo on why files outlive apps — in the agent era it reads as prophetic: plain markdown is the substrate agents already read.

  41. obsidian — a private and flexible writing app · obsidian · 2020 (year) · original ID: src-obsidian · Other public citations of this URL

    the local-first competitor that won the pragmatists while roam won the evangelists — first beta march 30, 2020, free, plain markdown.

  42. logseq/logseq · github · 2020 (year) · original ID: src-logseq · Other public citations of this URL

    the open-source outliner clone (agpl, local markdown/org files) that absorbed roam's most cost-sensitive users; its readme credits roam, org-mode, tiddlywiki, and workflowy.

  43. logseq raises $4.1m · logseq blog · ~2022 (approximate) · original ID: src-logseq-raise · Other public citations of this URL

    logseq's $4.1m raise from collison, friedman, lütke, and dave winer — explicitly on users 'jumping ship from roam.'

  44. athensresearch/athens · github · 2020 (year) · original ID: src-athens · Other public citations of this URL

    the cautionary open-source clone: yc w21, 6.3k stars, unmaintained since ~2023 — cloning the graph was never the hard part.

  45. tana — the all-in-one workspace with supertags · tana · 2023 (year) · original ID: src-tana · Other public citations of this URL

    the supertag successor built by ex-roam-community figures, launched on the explicit promise of finishing what roam started.

  46. tana raises $14m series a · tana blog · ~2024 (approximate) · original ID: src-tana-raise · Other public citations of this URL

    tana's $14m series a as an 'ai-native workspace' — the category's pivot to agents made literal.

  47. the next chapter for tana · tana blog · ~2025 (approximate) · original ID: src-tana-next-chapter · Other public citations of this URL

    'your graph is the context and conversations are your prompts… your knowledge graph builds itself every time you talk.'

  48. automatically add backlinks using ai · reflect · ~2023 (approximate) · original ID: src-reflect-backlinks · Other public citations of this URL · alex maccaw

    the labor handoff as a button: 'decorate my writing with backlinks.'

  49. mem's note-taking app plans to use ai · the verge · 2022-11-10 (day) · original ID: src-mem-verge · Other public citations of this URL · david pierce

    mem's ai-first pitch — 'a google search bar but for all nonpublic information' — and the memex homage in the name.

  50. capacities launch thread · hacker news · 2022-06-02 (day) · original ID: src-capacities · Other public citations of this URL

    object-based notes: typed objects instead of pages — structure by type and relation rather than folders.

  51. llm-wiki.md · github gist · 2026-04-04 (day) · original ID: src-karpathy-llm-wiki · Other public citations of this URL · andrej karpathy

    the agent-era restatement: an llm-maintained markdown wiki as 'a persistent, compounding artifact.' 'obsidian is the ide; the llm is the programmer; the wiki is the codebase.'

  52. graphrag: unlocking llm discovery on narrative private data · microsoft research · 2024-02-13 (day) · original ID: src-graphrag · Other public citations of this URL · larson & truitt

    microsoft's graphrag: llm-extracted knowledge graphs plus community summaries beat baseline rag on global sensemaking questions.

  53. ai's trillion-dollar opportunity: context graphs · foundation capital · 2025-12 (month) · original ID: src-context-graphs · Other public citations of this URL · jaya gupta & ashu garg

    the enterprise restatement: agents need decision traces — exceptions, overrides, precedents — captured into context graphs.

  54. introducing the model context protocol · anthropic · 2024-11-25 (day) · original ID: src-mcp · Other public citations of this URL

    anthropic's open socket between agents and data — the plumbing that makes agent-readable knowledge bases practical.

  55. look ma, no rag! building agent-native knowledge systems · blog.pollack.ai · ~2025 (approximate) · original ID: src-no-rag · Other public citations of this URL

    the links-beat-embeddings argument at project scale: index files as routing tables, let the agent follow links in two or three hops.

  56. benchmarking ai agent memory: is a filesystem all you need? · letta · ~2025 (approximate) · original ID: src-letta-benchmark · Other public citations of this URL

    the strongest counter-evidence: a plain agent with file tools hit 74% on the locomio memory benchmark — files plus grep rival specialized memory systems.

  57. introducing context repositories · letta · ~2025 (approximate) · original ID: src-letta-context-repos · Other public citations of this URL

    git-backed agent memory: markdown plus frontmatter projected into a real repo the agent greps and commits — roam's data model reinvented as infrastructure.

  58. agents.md · agents.md · 2025 (year) · original ID: src-agents-md · Other public citations of this URL

    the cross-vendor convention — 'a readme for agents' across codex, cursor, jules, copilot, and 60k+ projects.

  59. agent memory engineering · nicolasbustamante.com · ~2026 (approximate) · original ID: src-agent-memory-engineering · Other public citations of this URL · nicolas bustamante

    the audit caveat: production agent memory converges on small markdown taxonomies, and 'remember this' behavior is harness-trained — structure matters less than habit.

  60. karpathy's obsidian wiki broke at 100 articles · dev.to · ~2026 (approximate) · original ID: src-llm-wiki-broke · Other public citations of this URL · zaferdace

    the counter-lesson: at ~100 articles an llm-maintained wiki exceeds usable context and the model starts confidently fabricating cross-note relationships.

  61. why your second brain is dead · self.md · ~2025 (approximate) · original ID: src-second-brain-dead · Other public citations of this URL

    the bluntest version of the against case: 'the ai does not care about your backlinks… the expensive operation became free.'

  62. hraness/wordcell · github · 2026 (year) · original ID: src-wordcell · Other public citations of this URL · hraness

    a knowledge base for coding agents built from markdown, backlinks, semantic search, and git context — markdown and git authoritative, indexes as replaceable views.

  63. wordcell docs · wordcell.io · 2026 (year) · original ID: src-wordcell-docs · Other public citations of this URL · hraness

    wordcell's docs: context, backlinks, and history per code path, installed as an agent skill.

  64. sponge — a personal library for research · sponge.computer · 2025 (year) · original ID: src-sponge · Other public citations of this URL · hraness

    a knowledge harness where agents research against a saved corpus — cite the passages used, check claims against the text — while people steer, review, and control release.

  65. hraness/oh · github · 2026 (year) · original ID: src-oh · Other public citations of this URL · hraness

    an ontology kernel for agentic research: content-addressed entity, statement, assertion, and evidence records with an append-only operation log; indexes derived and rebuildable.

  66. what happened to roam research? magic, then friction · buildfirstbrain · ~2026 (approximate) · original ID: src-what-happened-roam · Other public citations of this URL

    a representative 'what happened to roam' essay — likely ai-assisted, used for the genre's shape rather than its claims: 'connections you do not understand are not understanding.'

  67. huffington post acquires localocracy · techcrunch · 2011-10-03 (day) · original ID: src-localocracy-acquisition · Other public citations of this URL

    the acquisition that anchors conaw's pre-roam history: localocracy — 'everyone is an expert about something' — sold to aol's huffington post media group.

  68. umass start-up website bought by huffington post · massachusetts daily collegian · 2011-10 (month) · original ID: src-localocracy-collegian · Other public citations of this URL

    the student-paper record: umass amherst founders, ages, and lead engineer jay voice.

  69. conor white-sullivan author archive · obamawhitehouse.archives.gov · 2012 (year) · original ID: src-whitehouse-archive · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    conaw's obama-era white house blog archive — participatory democracy writing under his own name: 'an anthropology major … in 2008 founded localocracy.'

  70. tedxboston — conor white-sullivan — localocracy · tedxboston / youtube · 2010-07-29 (day) · original ID: src-tedx-localocracy · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    the earliest surviving conaw talk video: localocracy as an online town common — collective intelligence a decade before roam.

  71. ignite amherst talk on tech, media, and political power · ignite amherst (shared via twitter) · 2009 (year) · original ID: src-ignite-amherst · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    fall 2009, five minutes and twenty slides: 'an abundance of hope and the reckless confidence of a 21 year old. still stand by most of this.'

  72. how i met my co-founder (origin thread) · threadreader app · 2019-09-05 (day) · original ID: src-conaw-origin-thread · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    the first-person founding story: meeting joshua brown at 42, the prototype, the co-founder offer — and 'just started bringing in users from the public a couple months ago.'

  73. the roam research white paper (mirror) · roam garden (mirror) · 2018 (year) · original ID: src-whitepaper-mirror · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    the readable export of the white paper — 'we wrote this white paper in winter of 2017/2018'; co-authored with journalist richard meadows, who became roam's first investor.

  74. welcome to roam — founder introduction · roam garden (mirror) · 2019 (year) · original ID: src-welcome-to-roam · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    the founder introduction inside roam's own public help graph — ending with his personal gmail and 'much love — conor.' the medium demonstrating itself.

  75. 365 propositions · threadreader app · 2018-12-25 (day) · original ID: src-365-propositions · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    the living thread-as-publication: hundreds of numbered daily propositions on thinking, consent, communal living, and the limits of thinkable thoughts — public thinking before the product.

  76. why evernote is a terrible second brain · threadreader app · 2019-02-23 (day) · original ID: src-evernote-rant · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    the 45-tweet thesis the white paper itself links as 'related twitter thread': 'writing isn't just a tool for communication. first and foremost, writing is a tool for thinking.'

  77. the zettelkasten thread · threadreader app · 2019-05-18 (day) · original ID: src-zettelkasten-thread · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    'the zettelkasten — it's like the gtd for intellectual progress' — the thread that tied roam to luhmann and opened invites, naming joshua brown as co-builder.

  78. trust in the gatekeepers / all time low · threadreader app · 2021-01-22 (day) · original ID: src-gatekeepers-thread · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    the continuity thread: 'trust in the gatekeepers / all time low' — 'the answer is not a new channel. it's a new format, a new medium, with a new power structure.' 'if had been no @localocracy there would be no @roamresearch.'

  79. api, fellowship, and the roam fund · threadreader app · 2020-09-19 (day) · original ID: src-post-raise-thread · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    the peak ecosystem-builder thread days after the seed: new backend, api and multiplayer, the roam fellowship (first fellow dhrumil mehta), and $2m for a roam fund — $1m balance sheet, $1m option pool.

  80. roamgames announcement · threadreader app · 2021-01-23 (day) · original ID: src-roamgames-thread · Other public citations of this URL · conor white-sullivan

    $10,000 every two weeks for three months to community builders 'whose public work pushes the frontier the farthest' — judged on intermediate packets and growing the commons.

Structured research records