Copilot and other “AI chatbots” read but can’t edit the files when I ask, “can you handle all 842 fleeting notes for me”. But mine when I press a button, and go to sleep I wake up .
I make a lot of simple, short, one-card-like note throughout the day. But I have a bad habit of letting them sit in my encounters/fleeting notes folder.
And I got REALLY sick of letting my encounters/fleeting notes stack up, where projects, content, and things stall because I didnt make the right link.
This is NOT having it write for me, but just doing the boring work.
In the past, I spent entire sundays processing my notes, sources, daily notes, logs – or I can have them be sorted and comfortable then focus on creating value by making content using maps of content following my rules that I struggle to meet even myself.
So I learned how to make a local n8n automation system, that is 100% private, and sorts notes for me overnight using a concept called Context Engineering. Aka vibecoding but with lots of context.
This is easy if you have a structure and workflow that you can articulate (like making a recipe)
So what I do is just make a note of the instructions.
Here’s my steps
I have a note that talks about these things
First my folder structure, e.g. I just describe what each folder I have is for
Then the workflow logic for what note would go in each folder e.g. if its a note about a youtube video that I’m studying with notes, it should go under Sources > Videos
Then I have a ton of status tags. I do a lot of business stuff, so I have processes, ideas to improve those processes, tasks and project ideas to do eventually etc.
So if its actionable, I have (links) or tags for what I need to do, what if I don’t do them, etc whatever works for me. Each set of tags are all 100% MECE, meaning it should slice all notes into a clear bucket with a Base that I can see them.
Then I have it link UP and any related maps or notes I may already have. It helps that my top homepage has like 5 core maps for life and 10 core maps for my business, so all notes I have fall within one of these 15 maps.
Then depending on the folder, and context, it applies a template – and updates the properies with a little status tag to let me know that it in fact is a cleaned up note. And the AI is told to go through all folders, to check all notes, if there is any new notes that don’t have this done (e.g. by tag), to process them.
But muh PKM is my own
Then I have a base, of all of these notes. And I spot check them, and can see that everything is in the right place, formatted right. And if I did this manually, it’d take 100x longer, and I’d spend my entire day linking exactly how I’d do it.
The automation of putting it together
With a Local AI, I have a simple automation that has an agentic local AI thats on my machine using Ollama using a local version of n8n to keep it private.
n8n is like zapier or make.com, but its private, local, and free. Just slow – since I’m using my entire 16 gb of ram to run it.
For the automation chain them together. The automation’s job is to read the note
Need help?
Edit: I saw some people might care to get help with this, so I’m making a video walkthrough to share.