Tana - Put your notes to work with voice and AI

Using it every day, I appreciate how it can be a lean bullet journal one second, and a full-blown [insert your need here] the next. The way it can distill voice into structured data is magical, and has completely changed how I capture my thoughts on-the-go. I feel like every calorie of effort I put into #tagging data is rewarded by building my own knowledge database, without feeling like I'm building a knowledge database. I cannot wait to see what the future holds but - in a very real sense - many of my daily journaling, note taking, wellness, team managing, company building needs are already covered with Tana.

I've been using Tana as my main personal knowledge management system for exactly two years. Without being overly dramatic it changed the ways I work. The combination of a standard query language, a flexible tagging system, and a little time has gotten to me to the point where my notes and ideas pop up in my daily workflow without me having to dig around for them. And I'm not a power user by any stretch! I build enough to make it work for me, stop tinkering (the hard part), and reap the benefits. When something is not working well I iterate just a little bit. Don't let the simplicity underwhelm you, or the power overwhelm. There's depth to Tana. And I appreciate a tool that grows with me. Thanks so much to the Tana team, and congratulations on your official launch!

Hey, this looks super cool! Is it possible to migrate from Notion?

I've been a PH member for nearly 10 years and this is one of those rare times I need to comment and not just hit the like button. This is one amazing piece of software. It has completely changed how I run my startup and get stuff done. The UI/UX, the speed, the smooth connections, the simple transition from just a text editor to a system which can be as deep and complicated as you want it to be, everything is right on point. Can't imagine life without it.

So great to see Tana finally launching! I've been using Tana to organize all my D&D GM and player notes for a while. I'm excited for more people to experience what an amazing tool it is.

Tana is the only note-taking tool I currently use for my daily activities. It is powerful, flexible, and beautifully designed. The Knowledge Graph is the feature I love most about Tana; it operates like a human brain and even more. I am incredibly grateful to Tana for bringing this wonderful app to life after more than three years of development. I highly recommend Tana to everyone — yes, everyone! It's a perfect match for any professional in any career.

Huge congratulations to the Tana team on this amazing launch! It feels hard to wrap my head around the fact that you're only now officially launching to the public when I've been managing just about every conceivable aspect of my life in Tana for 18 months now. Tana is a total game-changer! I've never used anything like it, nothing else compares. I've left a long and detailed review in the reviews section for anyone who wants to know just why Tana is so amazing, so I won't expand any further here. Onwards and upwards!

What a journey! So proud of the team and community that brought this together. I've used almost all the tools out there for productivity and note-taking over the years, and I can say without reservation that Tana is doing something completely new. The cruel irony I've learned through the years about building Notemaking and Productivity is that the more conscientious you are about maintaining your system, the more friction you gradually create. The more thorough you are in organizing information, the more overhead you generate. The better you get at capturing everything, the more time you spend managing what you've captured rather than engaging with it meaningfully. Eventually you walk away from the pile and try a new app, hoping that will solve the problem Tana works differently. It works the way your brain works. I encourage you to try it and find out for yourself. -If you want to here more, you can reach out to me at www.knowledgeworkstudio.com !

Tana is the one app in the PKM space that I just can’t quit. And as someone with ADHD, that is a sad truth about me: I am forever on a quest for “the perfect app”. I have tried them all, and will continue to do so, because I cannot stop myself. But I’ve been using Tana for 2 years now during its early development, a personal record. I can't exactly explain why, either…just feels right for me. The community is great, the developers are fun and truly listen to the community, and the app is so vast I keep finding new things to try. I’ve always been drawn to systems like Ryder Carroll’s Bullet Journal, or apps embraced by the ADHD community like Amazing Marvin. Tana falls into the latter category, and the Tana Slack channel has connected me with fellow neurodivergent folks who have become friends. We meet every couple of weeks to share our Tana (and non-Tana) adventures…our meetups are sheer chaos, as you can imagine. We each use Tana differently, and that’s the beauty of it—it adapts to our unique brains and ever-changing needs. Tana is designed to be used from the “bottom up,” similar to Heptabase, Capacities, or Obsidian. Unlike Notion, you don’t have to start by building folders and databases. This is Tana’s magic for me. I know myself well enough to realize that if I don’t capture something immediately, it’s likely gone forever. With Tana, I jot things down via voice or text and do not worry about organizing them right away; I don't need to think of the proper Database for the task or note. That job can be for Future Matt. Every new input in Tana is treated as a “node,” starting with a bullet. It might take a bit to get used to, but once you do, you’ll see how flexible it is. You can “supertag” nodes, giving them magical powers, but you don't have to—you’re not locked into any structure. Need to change, re-tag, or un-tag something later? No problem. This level of fine-tuning is essential for me, allowing me to adapt and find better connections. I cannot tell you how many times I have re-named and changed the properties of my "Project" supertag. Why? Only my therapist knows. But I love that I can, and love that in doing so, nothing gets lost; I'm just changing the "outfit" those nodes are wearing. In Notion, this is a punishing nightmare. Tana’s AI implementation is one of the cleanest and most powerful I’ve seen. The developers are constantly adding new features and have a great relationship with users. They know the app is dense and are always working to make onboarding easier. Despite its complexity, Tana’s releases are solid and reliable. How many apps do you use on a daily basis that you love, but can be completely borked by a software update (hi, Descript!)? Tana don't play that. Tana probably isn't for everyone. If you’re looking for traditional folders and file systems, genuinely love to spend weeks building databases before you add your first note to your PKM, or are triggered by bullets, it might not be your cup of tea. I'm secretly envious of your organizational skillz. But try it anyway. Join the Slack community (especially the #adhd-autism-nd channel!), take the time to explore its powerful deep nerdery, simple beauty, and experience the joy of capturing your thoughts on the go for Future You. You might find that you won't be able to quit it, either. 😁

I've been amazed at how many other productivity tools I've been able to build an equal-or-better version of in Tana. And at how responsive and accessible the Tana team are. And at how smart and, well, communal the community are. The more time I invest in building exactly what I need inside Tana, the more of my other productivity tools end up being redundant. My productivity stack is gradually becoming Tana. And I know the Tana of six months from now or a year from now, will be vastly better. Because that's been the trend so far.