A private memory for everything

Every ask, newest first

Each line is an AI paraphrase of what the writer wanted. The link goes to their own words on Hacker News.

Reader’s note. Privacy and self-hosting recur; AI assistant asks excluded.

1. Jan 2026Wants a bookmark and notes service that saves text snapshots and surfaces items by context using local-AI search. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: Do you also "hoard" notes/links but struggle to turn them into actions?”
2. Aug 2024Wants an open-source tool replacing notes and NAS, auto-saving chats and files and retrieving them in later chats. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Are there any open-source tools similar to GPT-NAS?”
3. May 2024Wants an open-source, locally run alternative to Microsoft Recall that records everything they do. Read it: a comment in “Microsoft's AI chatbot will 'recall' everything you do on its new PCs”
4. May 2024Would pay for a packaged tool that privately digests emails, PDFs and chats locally, answering questions with sources. Read it: a comment in “AI copilots are changing how coding is taught”
5. Apr 2024Wants a fully offline local language model for processing personal documents, with no data leaving the machine. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Recommendations for Local LLMs in 2024: Private and Offline?”
6. Jul 2023Wishes for a tool that takes spoken or typed notes and organizes them automatically. Read it: a comment in “The Overflowing Brain: Information overload and the limits of working memory”
7. Apr 2023Wants a self-hosted personal chatbot that sorts and structures messy notes, because the notes contain business secrets. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: How do you document and organize your scribbles/files?”
8. Mar 2023Would pay for a private chatbot answering questions from their email, browsing history, and social likes and comments. Read it: a comment in “How to create a private ChatGPT with your own data”
9. Jun 2022Wants Pocket import in a smarter personal knowledge tool, since Pocket only stores links and content. Read it: a comment in “Show HN: Recall – Your Personal Encyclopedia”
10. Feb 2022Wants photo library search integrated with the rest of their notes, beyond what DEVONthink or Obsidian offer. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: Notes, mind-maps, browser tabs all in one solution?”
11. Jan 2022Wants a tool that records and indexes everything (text, history, links, video chats, messages) instead of manual notes. Read it: a comment in “Gains I'm seeing from my second brain tool”
12. Jun 2020Wants an automatic, searchable record of pages actually read, mainly on iOS, with low subscription fees. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Distributed cognition automated workflow suggestions”
13. Jan 2020Wants a personal knowledge system where bookmarks, notes, and PDFs are equal items grouped under subjects. Read it: a comment in “Managing my personal knowledge base”
14. Jun 2019Wants a place to dump images, notes and quotes, tag items multiple ways, and search by tag. Read it: a post: “Ask HN: Personal Database Tool?”
15. Mar 2019Would pay for a self-hosted knowledge app handling many file types, with annotation, tagging, web and phone access. Read it: a comment in “Polar as a Personal Knowledge Repository”
16. Oct 2016Would pay for an online knowledge store with tags, full-text search, phone access and email-in for snippets. Read it: a comment in “Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?”
17. Nov 2014Would pay for full-text search of every visited page, provided they control their data. Read it: a comment in “Fetching.io: Search the full text of every web page you visit”
18. Nov 2014Would buy a locally installed link search with full-text, highlights and tags, replacing a cloud-only manager. Read it: a comment in “Fetching.io: Search the full text of every web page you visit”
19. Nov 2010Wishes for one good memex system for searchable, re-orderable notes instead of juggling several iPad apps. Read it: a comment in “The Man Who Wrote Down Every Thought He Had”