Person
Lena Brandt
Tags
Leads marketing for the Spring Launch. Likes a short written summary before every call.
Linked from
- Weekly sync with Lena
- Thursday, Oct 15
Second brain app
A second brain you don’t have to build.
Most second brains die of upkeep. Capacities comes with the structure built in: a note for today, a place for every person, book, and project, and links that bring it all back. You just write.
Used by 50,000+ active knowledge workers
Monday
19 October 2026
Daily note
- Call Maya about the Lisbon talk
- Material World: solar cells need ultra-pure silicon
- Talk rehearsal moved to Thursday
- Idea: a monthly letter on Slow productivity
- 21:14Gift for Dad: the Kyoto photo book
The idea
What is a second brain?
A second brain is a trusted place outside your head for what you learn, think, and plan, so you can find it and build on it later.
Tiago Forte made the term popular with his course and his 2022 book Building a Second Brain. The idea is much older: commonplace books, index cards, and the Zettelkasten all did the same work on paper. We wrote more about it in A second brain.
“Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them.”
Every second brain has three jobs.
Catch
Get a thought out of your head the moment you have it, before you know where it belongs.
Keep
Give it a place that still makes sense in a year, so it doesn’t turn into a pile.
Find again
See it again when it matters, next to the people and projects it belongs to.
Most apps give you the parts and leave the building to you. Capacities does all three out of the box.
Why they fail
Why most second brains end up as graveyards
People don’t give up on their second brain because the idea is wrong. They give up because keeping it alive turns into a second job.
The system becomes the project
Databases, templates, plugins, dashboards. You spend a weekend building it, and another one fixing it when your work changes.
“I spent more time tinkering with the system than actually using it.”
Every note is a decision
Which folder? Which tag? Which database? When saving a thought means choosing where it goes, you stop saving thoughts.
“On Notion you still have to decide WHERE to put things.”
The archive nobody opens
Everything goes in. Nothing comes back out. Search only helps when you remember that a note exists.
“I can search, but I can’t search for what I forgot exists.”
A second brain only works if it’s less work than your first one.
How it works
The structure is built in. You just write.
Capacities is built on three ideas. Together they catch, keep, and bring back what you write, so you never design a system before you can use one.
1 · Today is the inbox
Catch it
Monday
19 October 2026
Coffee with Maya . She recommends Material World for the talk.
One line, two links. Nothing to file.
2 · Think in things
Keep it
BookMaterial World
- Author
- Ed Conway
- Status
- Reading
- Recommended by
- Maya
Lands with your books. Every book gets the same properties.
3 · The network remembers
Find it again
PersonMaya
Mentioned in
- 19 October 2026Today
- Material WorldToday
- Talk rehearsalIn 3 weeks
Open Maya before the rehearsal, and it’s all there.
Today is the inbox
Brain dump now. Sort it later, or never.
Every day has its own note. Write whatever comes up, and link a person or a project if you want to. Nothing has to be filed before you can move on.
One page for the day
Your notes and everything you created today, in one view. With Pro, your meetings sit on the same page.
Capture from anywhere
Send a thought from WhatsApp, Telegram, or email, and it lands in today’s note.
From a line to an object
When a passing thought grows, turn it into a project, a person, or an idea of its own.
“I love that I can just brain dump my thoughts and deal with it later.”
Think in things, not files
A book is a book. A person is a person.
In Capacities, everything you keep is an object with a type. A book has an author. A meeting has a date and people. Upload a PDF and it lands with your PDFs. The type gives each note its place, so “where does this go?” stops being a question.
Change it once, everywhere
Add a property to a type, and every object of that type gets it.
No single hierarchy
A note can belong to a project, a person, and a topic at the same time.
Start small
Begin with pages and the daily note. Add types like Book or Meeting when you notice you need them.
“When I upload a PDF, it goes into a dedicated place for PDFs.”
The network remembers
Open a person. See everything.
Every link in Capacities works in both directions. Mention a contact in a meeting note and in today’s note, and when you open that contact, both are already there. Your notes come back in context, not only when you search.
Backlinks by default
Every mention shows up on the object it mentions.
Notes you forgot, brought back Pro
Related Content shows the closest notes under the one you’re reading, even ones you never linked.
Many ways back
Search, tags, queries, and the graph. Use the ones you like, ignore the rest.
Daily note Linked to 0 objects
Thursday
15 October 2026
Graph view
Already in your space, linked to what you just mentioned
A daily note types itself. Each name it links, such as Maya Chen, Spring Launch, the book Deep Work, and Lena Brandt, appears in the graph below it. Objects that were already linked to Spring Launch, such as the pricing call and the Q3 roadmap, show up too.
“If I go to that contact, all the information of the other notes are there.”
The point was never to store everything. It’s to stop carrying it.
Write it down, link it to what it belongs to, and let it go. The call you have to return, the idea for the talk, the line from the book. It’s all in a place you trust, so your head has room again for the thing in front of you.
Over time
Works in week one. Still fits in year three.
A second brain is only worth it if you still use it in a few years. People start with the daily note in their first week. Later, they tell us they stop thinking about the system at all.
Week one
Useful before it is perfect
“I started using it functionally from the first week! I continued to make tweaks but I didn’t feel like I needed to build the whole thing up before being able to use it.”
Reddit, r/capacitiesapp
First month
Objects click
“At first, Capacities’ “objects” felt strange. But following some advice, I tried adapting to this new way of thinking for a few weeks, and it just clicked.”
Reddit, r/capacitiesapp
Year two and beyond
The system disappears
“I’ve been using Capacities for about two years now, and I don’t think about the system at all anymore. It evolves, of course, but naturally and without any friction.”
Reddit, r/capacitiesapp
AI second brain
A second brain your AI can read, too
Connect your AI assistant to your space. It looks things up in your notes before it answers, and saves what it learns back as notes you can open, edit, and link.
Works with the assistant you use
ChatGPT, Claude, Le Chat, Cursor, Claude Code, and many more connect to the same space.
Your knowledge, not the chat’s
Memory built into a chat app stays in that app. Your notes stay yours when you switch assistants.
You stay in control
Each connection reaches only the space you pick. Every edit is saved in version history.
Project
Launch plan
One page in your knowledge base
ChatGPT
When is the launch again?
3 October. It moved from September after your call with Maya.
Launch planClaude
Write a short update for the team about the launch.
Here’s a draft based on your Launch plan page…
Launch planLe Chat
What is still open before we launch?
Two things: the venue booking and Maya’s sign-off on the email.
Launch planNothing to maintain
A second brain that doesn’t need a caretaker
No plugins to update, no sync to set up, no code inside your notes. Capacities is built and hosted in Europe by a small, independent team, funded by the people who use it.
Sync included
Phone, tablet, desktop, and web. Works offline, too. Included on the free plan.
Scheduled backups
Automated Markdown exports to your own device, several times a day.
Clean exports
Your notes come out as notes. No query syntax or plugin code inside them.
No lock-in
Export everything, any time. If you leave, your knowledge comes with you.
Choosing an app
When another second brain app fits better
Capacities is not the right second brain for everyone. Here is where we would point you somewhere else.
You want plain files on your own disk
Pick Obsidian or Logseq. Capacities is a cloud app with offline access and Markdown export, not a folder of local files.
Your team shares one knowledge base
Pick Notion. Capacities is built for one person. There is no real-time collaboration, and none is planned.
You need end-to-end encryption
Pick Anytype. Capacities stores your notes on EU servers, encrypted in transit and at rest, but not end to end.
Questions about second brains
Give your thoughts a place to land
Start your second brain on the free plan. The structure is already there.
Free plan No credit card required Export any time