A quick tour of Capacities (2023)

Capacities organizes personal knowledge around “objects” and then connects them through bottom-up linking—so content becomes a navigable network instead of a folder hierarchy. Every piece of information in Capacities is treated as an object: built-in types cover things like pages, web links, PDFs, tweets, files, and audio, while users can create custom object types such as recipes, quotes, and books. Objects can carry properties (for example, a book card can include a cover image, author, and reading status), and those properties can link to other objects—like an author field that jumps to a person object with its own backlinks to the book.

The app avoids folders entirely. New content is created quickly from anywhere by typing the object type and name, even inline while writing. That design supports a network mindset: instead of deciding where something “belongs” in advance, users relate it after the fact by adding links, tags, and collections. This is where Capacities shifts from simple categorization to relationship-driven organization. A recipe object can be attached to a collection (such as Mediterranean recipes), tagged with multi-select attributes like cuisine, and linked to other recipes it “goes well with.”

To make those relationships visible, Capacities includes a graph view that visualizes the local network around a chosen object. In the recipe example, the graph highlights related tags, linked media, and the collection membership, turning metadata into an explorable map of ideas.

A final layer ties the network to time: daily notes. Recipes can include a “cook” property that stores the date last cooked; clicking that date opens the corresponding daily node in a calendar layout. Daily nodes show reflections and notes written on that day, plus references to related content created or interacted with—such as the recipe cooked, other items collected, tags added, and screenshots saved. Daily notes also function as a lightweight planning and journaling space: users can jot to-dos, capture snippets encountered during the day, review what happened, and apply templates like a “daily routine.” Activity tracking (sport, reading, audiobooks, and more) can link back to the underlying objects, such as assigning a task to write a chapter in a specific book.

Capacities also integrates external input. Email, Telegram, and WhatsApp can send messages, voice recordings, files, and images directly into daily notes—turning everyday capture into structured memory. A WhatsApp quote and a photo, for instance, can land in the day’s node, while an email newsletter can be forwarded to create a reference for later listening.

Beyond this tour, the app points to features like fast full-text search, import/export in multiple formats, a powerful editor, and a mobile app in testing. The pitch centers on community feedback: Capacities is positioned as a tool built with user input, with a Discord community offered for collaboration.