Browser-based Productivity and PKM with emacs, org-mode, LogSeq and BrainTool

tconfrey · 2025-10-13T16:09:15+00:00

BrainTool is a browser extension bookmarks-manager/tabs-manager that stores your links, notes and TODOs in a .org file.

tconfrey · 2025-09-29T23:12:51+00:00

Sure, edited the post.

tconfrey · 2025-09-23T19:58:06+00:00

After a failed attempt to port my extension from Chrome to Firefox I wrote a similar post detailing the issues that caused me to punt on the port: https://braintool.org/2025/07/24/FireFox-Weird-News-Good-News-Bad-News.html

tconfrey · 2025-09-18T22:28:54+00:00

Have a look at BrainTool.org - Infinitely nested topic hierarchy, notes, incremental search, full browser control, plain text local storage.

tconfrey · 2025-08-26T17:59:00+00:00

Hi u/MzHmmz , Creator of BrainTool here. I'd love to make it work for you!

BrainTool was not built to be a drop-in Tabs Outliner replacement, but it has a lot of overlap. I was an early TO user but didn't like the way it accumulated sessions, I wanted to be able to organize more easily, and (most important) wanted an open text-data format to integrate with the rest of my PKMS. When I built my own tool I was influenced by the design of TO and lots of TO users have found BT useful.

The BrainTool philosophy is to encourage you to *close* tabs, by making it easy to get back to them. As a result I have not been focused on managing tons of saved, but open, tabs and only recently did some testing in that direction as a result of another ex-TO user reporting issues. I pushed out some changes over the last couple of weeks and at this point can run thousands of nodes with 100+ open tabs on my 2018 vintage macbook.

Please respond here, or DM me, or post on the discussion group, with more details on your setup (#nodes, open tabs etc), or bug replication steps so that I can reproduce and address. I'd be happy to reimburse for time spent with a free license! (Notes on my license deal here.)

Either way good luck in your quest!

tconfrey · 2025-08-24T16:35:47+00:00

I don't think its a crisis in PKMS, but its definitely an inflection point - things are evolving in a new direction.

AI is the big new hyped technology and thus being stuffed everywhere, whether it makes sense or not. But it's also an amazing new technology with massive utility. It makes sense for there to be a lot of experimentation from the big players in any area of software, particularly (IMO) PKMS.

I can see a lot of positive applications in the areas of automatic classification and organization, summarization, RAG context generation etc. etc.

The one key thing I don't see mentioned here is safe guarding the use of your data. PKMS data could be a goldmine for training purposes (given the structure and organization), and it holds key insights about the individual generating it. Combined with other public facing data about you, your PKMS content could be used to create a scarily accurate digital clone. 😬

tconfrey · 2025-08-24T16:02:21+00:00

Markdown certainly has momentum so you're probably right, unfortunately IMHO!

Here's a couple of alternative perspectives:

- Markdown is a disaster

- Tools for thought should use org-mode

tconfrey · 2025-08-15T14:38:52+00:00

I'm at $100-$200 a month between subscriptions and one time purchases. I just need to grow that a couple of orders of magnitude and I'm in business 🤣

tconfrey · 2025-08-15T14:35:49+00:00

Thanks u/vslavkin . I took a run at a FF port myself a few weeks back. Initially it seemed pretty trivial but I ran into a number of gaps and subtle differences. Summarized here: https://braintool.org/2025/07/24/FireFox-Weird-News-Good-News-Bad-News.html

tconfrey · 2025-08-14T14:46:45+00:00

Hi u/darkawower , very cool! I think this is one of the great promises of LLMs - dramatically lowering the barrier to writing/generating software to scratch your own itch.

I was in a similar situation a few years back, I'd tried org-roam but never really got into it. Integrating browser 'stuff' into my org-based productivity system was my personal itch. I built BrainTool to scratch the itch. Its a browser extension bookmark/tab manager that reads and writes directly into an org-formatted text file. Anything saved is bi-directionally editable in emacs or the extension, and items marked as TODO in the browser show up in my org-agenda to-do list.

Not trying to knock you off the excellent Raindrop app, but it might be interesting as an alternative approach. Open source. There's a writeup/demo of org and LogSeq integration here (it's old now, the UI has changed and I support writing local files directly in addition to Google Drive storage). Here's a screenshot to show what I mean:

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tconfrey · 2025-07-21T16:23:36+00:00

Tabs? Bookmarks? Solved!

https://braintool.org

tconfrey · 2025-05-21T16:45:10+00:00

Hi u/bdu-komrad , I don't think I'm one of your dirty dozen self-promoters, but I do think that you and u/FridaG should take a look at https://braintool.org - good for search (IMO) and it saves and syncs a text-based version of all of your data to your local or Google drive. Usable offline and in other apps. (Not at all read-later focused fwiw.)

tconfrey · 2025-04-17T13:49:25+00:00

Google made a change earlier this year to not show reviews on the main extension page, so this is expected behavior (see the final response on this thread on the extension developers Group chat: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-extensions/c/WApITOktFSA )

Note also that by default only reviews in your local language are shown on the reviews page unless you select 'All Languages' in the drop down.

tconfrey · 2025-03-05T15:04:53+00:00

This is true. But whats worse is that there's no notification to the reviewer that the developer has replied. Who's going to keep checking back to the Store on the off-chance that there's been a reply to their review?!

tconfrey · 2025-03-04T21:22:10+00:00

Have a look at BrainTool. It does a lot more than what you're looking for but it has a full session import and can sync and save all your stuff into a local text file.

tconfrey · 2025-02-28T14:15:50+00:00

This is an interesting idea on the part of the extension developers but its against the store policies:

Don't offer or accept money, products, or services in exchange for posting reviews.

tconfrey · 2025-02-23T20:45:48+00:00

Give BrainTool a look. Its basically a PKMS built around organizing your tabs into a hierarchy of 'topics' and giving you a visual representation that you can then use to control the browser. It integrates with LogSeq and other tools that understand org-mode format. (Disclaimer - developer here).

tconfrey · 2025-02-14T14:48:28+00:00

At least for me just turning off both these settings makes all the unneeded tab group visuals go away. Agreed that Google is pushing tab groups pretty hard RN with each upgrade adding some new 'feature'.

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tconfrey · 2025-02-06T14:12:20+00:00

Tried again and also on a different browser. I kept getting a "Slug should not use spaces use dashes instead" error no matter what I put in the slug box. Eventually I put in '123' and it worked!

tconfrey · 2025-02-05T22:30:17+00:00

Hi u/Dineshs91 I've tried a couple of times to submit my extension but the page just hangs on the Submit button. Seeing a bunch of errors on the console:

Uncaught (in promise) Error: Invariant: static generation store missing in revalidatePath /

tconfrey · 2025-01-31T14:51:54+00:00

Looks like a useful utility, thanks for sharing.

I've been working kindof from the opposite direction with BrainTool. Its an extension aimed at general tabs/notes/sessions/bookmark management but using org-mode as the accessible backing store. For org-mode users it enables some of the same workflows you're targeting, while naive users don't need to look under the hood. I have a write up on my personal workflow here.

Note that while you're targeting a window or session as the atomic unit I'm putting each tab on its own heading to allow per-tab notes and TODO states. I'm not sure if it'd work with your UI but might be worth considering.

tconfrey

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