I Built an AI Agent for My Second Brain: Voice Notes to Atomic Ideas
Tools for Augmented Intelligence
As a time series AI research engineer, I’m busy.
But I can’t help myself.
My hobby is exploring the frontiers of "augmented intelligence".
In my work, I rely on my second brain for learning, exploring new research directions, and improving my overall performance as a human.
But I spend a lot of time thinking about how artificial intelligence can augment human capabilities rather than replace them. Where we use AI to help us process information faster, organize our thinking, and overcome cognitive limitations while keeping us humans firmly in control.
Recently, I took a week off from work to build a plugin for Obsidian that embodies this philosophy.
Here is v0.1 of OpenAugi.
What is Augmented Intelligence?
Before diving into the plugin details, let me clarify what I mean by augmented intelligence. Unlike artificial intelligence that aims to automate thinking, augmented intelligence helps us think better. It's AI that:
Keeps you in control of the thinking process
Helps you process information faster
Organizes your ideas without generating new content for you
Amplifies your existing cognitive abilities
Augmented intelligence is using AI to distill, search, and organize - rather than to generate.
Two Problems the OpenAugi Plugin Solves
The plugin addresses two specific pain points I have:
Processing Voice Notes: I capture thoughts while driving or walking using voice notes, but the resulting transcripts are messy, time-consuming to process, and difficult to extract value from.
Organizing Scattered Notes: When working on larger projects, my relevant notes are scattered throughout my vault, making it challenging to bring everything together coherently.
How It Works
The plugin offers two main features today:
1. Parse Transcript
This feature processes voice note transcriptions and automatically:
Creates atomic notes from distinct ideas
Extracts tasks and action items
Generates a summary of the transcript
Links everything together in your vault
To help guide the AI, I use a special token ("Auggie") when speaking, which signals when I want to create a new note or extract a task.
2. Distill Linked Notes
This feature works with either:
Notes linked in an MOC (Map of Content)
Notes retrieved through a dataview query
It pulls all the content from these scattered notes, processes them together, and generates:
New atomic notes for distinct concepts
A summary that serves as a parent note
Extracted tasks from across all notes
The Bigger Vision: OpenAugi
This plugin is part of a larger vision I call "Open Auggie" (Open Augmented General Intelligence) - an ecosystem where:
Users own their data
Knowledge networks can connect while respecting privacy
Contributors are incentivized for novel thinking
AI augments rather than replaces human intelligence
While I work full-time as a research engineer and can't build this entire vision alone, I'm starting with practical tools like this plugin that demonstrate the concept in action.
Try It Yourself
The plugin is open source and available on GitHub. I'm currently waiting for approval to list it in the Obsidian Community Plugins directory.
If you're interested in contributing to this vision of augmented intelligence or have feedback on the plugin, join our Discord community or connect with me on GitHub:
I believe we're at an interesting frontier where more people are exploring how to use AI while maintaining their agency and continuing to grow as thinkers.
I hope this plugin contributes to that conversation and helps you organize your thinking more effectively.
Please reach out if you’d like to get involved as a contributor, builder, or future user. I’d love to help/ advise you while I focus on my research.