making space for synthesis

building enzyme

A year ago, I wrote about getting started with Obsidian and personal knowledge management. The post resonated with many of you who were looking to build better systems for capturing and processing information. Today, I want to explore what happens after we've built those systems - specifically, the ongoing work of synthesis and meaning-making.

The Challenge of Processing

While my previous post focused on making capture effortless, there's a real challenge in keeping up with the rhythm for processing what we've captured. Whether it's Readwise highlights from books, scattered thoughts in my inbox, or insights from conversations, the work of turning raw material into meaningful connections requires dedicated attention.

This mirrors a conversation I had recently about physical planners - they work precisely because they impose constraints. You can only fit so many items on a page, forcing you to prioritize what matters most. Digital tools remove these natural limits, making it easy to accumulate without processing.

Core Building Blocks

Through experimenting with different approaches, I've found a few fundamental elements that help manage this challenge:

1. Daily notes serve as a "stack" that needs regular consolidation - letting them accumulate indefinitely creates more noise than signal

2. The inbox works best as a temporary holding area for bigger ideas, not a permanent storage solution

3. A small set of consistently used tags (I aim for ~10) helps surface patterns without becoming overwhelming

4. Block references and transclusions allow ideas to flow between notes while maintaining context

Introducing Enzyme

These insights led me to develop Enzyme, a tool for processing notes more intentionally. I first built it for Obsidian because its users already have strong personal workflows that I wanted to enhance rather than replace. But the underlying principles - working with plain text files, maintaining connections between notes, respecting existing systems - apply beyond any single platform. Enzyme integrates with Markdown files, which serve as a universal foundation for knowledge systems, providing three key features:

• A natural chat interface that works within your existing note-taking workflow, whether that's Obsidian, plain text files, or other Markdown-based tools

• Direct querying using familiar building blocks like tags, links, and folders that are common across knowledge management systems

• Navigable output that embeds excerpts while maintaining connections to source notes, preserving context

The goal isn't to automate synthesis or lock you into a specific ecosystem, but to help you explore context and draw conclusions in ways that evolve naturally with your understanding.

Beyond Productivity

While building these tools, I've come to realize that personal knowledge management isn't just about productivity. For many of us, especially those who process information differently, these systems provide essential scaffolding for making sense of our experiences and ideas.

The work of processing notes - turning fleeting thoughts into lasting insights - can't be fully automated. But we can build tools that make this deeply human work more intentional and meaningful.

I'm sharing these reflections not because I think I've solved knowledge management, but because I believe we're still early in understanding how digital tools can support our thinking. The next frontier isn't faster capture or better search, but rather creating spaces that help us slow down and engage more deeply with our ideas.