zak-stack

this specifies the stack that I use for capturing notes, arranging thoughts, and then enabling and directing action

requirements (in order of importance):

• storage
  • ability to store, restore, retrieve all context
• positioning (arranging, and associating) relates to building structure within notes
  • position is defined in terms of absolute location (eg: directory, machine, separate files), and also in terms of relative associations / links to other artifacts (ie : creating relations)
  • in terms of physical absolute location I require storage to make content available on mobile, my laptop, and remote machines on my home network (home server)
• capturing
  • easy of ability to capture thoughts, observations, action items on available surfaces => friction here strictly reduces what is captured vs. dropped
• navigation
  • mechanisms to enable navigation will drive the paths that are taken
• editing
  • ability to edit with full context
• sharing
  • should be seamless but intentional. There should be a path for private notes to 'escape' / 'emerge' to the outside world when they are ready

Below table outlines tools to achieve the above concrete

tool	requirement	concrete details
nextcloud (w/ webdav)	storage	place to durably store notes in a way that enables syncing to various channels, restoration, retrieval from various channels
	(absolute) positioning
org syntax & org roam	(relative) positioning	should be able to create links, transclusions, split notes, move notes throughout a graph structure
	capturing
	navigation
(orgzly revived mobile, emacs otherwise)	editing
?	sharing	should be able to seamlessly push notes to a wider audience

thought-tooling-stack-reproducibility

Below are items used endearingly, but currently ruled out through trial and error and other accumulated experience:

• storage
  • emacs tramp mode => too slow for large (large = ~10mo of daily notes)
  • automerge syncing => live syncing is useful for collaboration, but nextcloud w/ webdav is more mature / complete at this time and meets my needs
  • orgzly revived webdav repo for syncing => requires CA trusted TLS which does not work for self-hosted (can only have self-signed)
• editing
  • (* -> 2020) paper => great when I was a student since I had sufficient structure for various courses and also helped to contain notes until end of the course, but eventually lacked support on multiple distributed surfaces
  • (2020 -> 2021) raw notes in a text file => great to start capturing notes in written format, but eventually I needed more structure
  • () markdown => good to start in terms of becoming familiar with
• (2021 -> 2025) obsidian => Specifically killer features for me were captures, refiles, clocking). linking and templates, but org has richer functionality that aligns well with my usage without adding bloat
• publishing
  • github pages => id prefer something more seamless than git push, also spent more time than id like managing jekykll templates
  • publii => liked templates, but similarly was not seamless enough for my taste. I am looking for something with more brutalist & hyper-bare w/ little indirection from my native notes

• editing
  • ACP clients => this seems to increase the coverage of exposing functionality from agents across surfaces, but what functionality is that? acp-functionality
  • agent-augmented content with acp + emacs server =>
• publishing org-roam-to-website-publish
  • nextcloud?
  • webdav
  • ipfs