I launched this channel in 2017 reviewing note-taking apps, and I genuinely used all of them—Roam, Obsidian, Notion, Mem, Tana, Heptabase. In this video I show you the proof of why that era is over. The core problem isn’t that those tools are “bad”—it’s that they’re built around a developer’s scaffold. Even when you customize with plugins or templates, you’re still dependent on someone else’s structure, roadmap, and access to your own data. So I build what I actually use now: Personal Knowledge Assistance (PKA). From an empty folder on my desktop, I launch Claude Code in the terminal (yes, the terminal is not scary) and set up my AI team: Larry as the orchestrator, Pax as the researcher, and Nolan as HR. No code—just text files and clear guardrails. Then I add a local SQLite database for journaling, meeting notes, CRM/contacts, and projects, plus an inbox workflow to drop in scanned PDFs so the system can OCR, organize, index, and make everything searchable. The big takeaway: it’s not Claude replacing PKM—it’s AI + ownership. Your system lives in your folder, and you can swap the “brain” anytime without breaking your workflow.