Capacities 2025

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Posted by Donovan
Jan 28, 2025 at 01:00 AM

I just got an email about Capacities. These people develop on turbo. So many options, so much — class. AI with a knowledge base like this will be just crazy good. The email was news of Capacities moving to a local first model with instant syncing. This makes it worth a look for me. Giving it a trial. Any thoughts on Capacities?
https://capacities.io

Posted by exatty95
Jan 28, 2025 at 01:29 AM

Bulk importing has been in the “Planned” column on its roadmap for some time, so just be aware that you may not be able to transfer your notes from another program anytime soon. If it weren’t for that, I probably would have taken the plunge.

Posted by satis
Dec 1, 2025 at 08:57 PM

I’ve been quietly tracking the evolution of Capacities. Writer Julian Simpson, whose CRIMPing tendencies are dizzying, recently described it as “consistently the best, most comprehensive, and most fun to use.”

His writing workflow is eclectic bordering on chaotic: IA Writer for certain pieces, Ulysses for long-form work (at least historically), a recent migration of his novel from Ulysses into Scrivener, and parallel co-drafting across IA Writer and Obsidian. It sounds like a mess to me but maybe fragmentation and chaos fuels his creative momentum.

Simpson has experimented with most of the usual suspects in the info-management space. Given that he writes and produces BBC podcasts among other projects, he needs to wrangle arrays of episodes, notes, research, scripts, and ancillary material. He has previously written on his blog about using NotePlan, Craft, and Notion, and as of this summer he appeared to have settled (back) into Notion… though that may no longer be the case. Craft, meanwhile, seems to be a recurring temptation he’s circled back to for a decade.

Capacities’ latest updates now let users supply their own API keys from OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, or xAI (previously only OpenAI was supported). The update also introduces Kindle highlights integration - they can now be imported directly into Capacities via email by sending exported highlights to save@capacities.io

Release notes: https://capacities.io/whats-new/release-56

Posted by MadaboutDana
Dec 2, 2025 at 11:25 AM

Ha, sounds like me! While I’m pretty firmly fixed on Obsidian and TickTick now, I still enjoy encouraging the developer of Octarine and others. I would happily switch to Octarine as a PKM system if there was a mobile client, simply because of its astoundingly small footprint (and speed). But mobile Obsidian isn’t bad! And TickTick has always been fast and efficient. I should also give a shout out to Automattic’s Simplenote, which I use as a kind of cross-platform clipboard (as well as Automattic’s astonishing Beeper, a free app that aggregates multiple messaging services in a single interface; I use it on all my devices, and it saves So.Much.Time! Especially since I do *not* keep my smartphone firmly clutched in one hand wherever I go). Oh, and I use DuckDuckGo as my cross-platform browser, because it also protects Android devices from the many, many outgoing calls made by apps, and it syncs across all my devices.

I’ve had a sniff at Capacities before, and while I like it, I still think Obsidian offers much more bang for your buck. To get the most out of Obsidian, you do have to customise it using plugins, but there are so many outstanding plugins (most of which now run on mobile OSes as well) that this is by no means a hardship. And the recent release of Bases, Obsidian’s equivalent to a lightweight databasing system, has made the platform even more convincing.

Craft is always interesting, not least because the pace of development remains extraordinary, but I’m increasingly disinclined to use systems (such as the new Superlist) that embed documents in other documents without giving you an easy way to generate an overview. There are many ways to build overviews in Obsidian, including Notebook Navigator, Notes Gallery, Calendar, Tag Summary and the fantastic Hover Editor, as well as various Kanban options (personally, I don’t use Dataview due to the performance hit). There are also ways to re-create LogSeq in Obsidian (e.g. Daily Notes Editor), as well as the awesome Various Complements, which I’ve described before. One of the rather nice things about Obsidian is that plugins developed years ago still work now (such as Zoom).

Cheers,
Bill

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