# [[My AI notetaking workflow]] <iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/2Jl6H9Ri8iI" title="YouTube video player" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe> plugins:: "[[QuickAdd plugin]], [[Obsidian Granola Sync plugin]], [[Obsidian Voicenotes Sync plugin]], [[Obsidian Plaud Sync plugin]], [[Obsidian BRAT plugin]]" Related:: "[[OpenClaw]], [[Malik Alimoekhamedov]], [[Nick Milo]], [[Spokenly]], [[NVIDIA]], [[Qwen]], [[Otter.ai]], [[Granola]], [[Voicenotes]], [[Plaud]]" ## Sources [[Script - Plaud Obsidian workflow]] ## Pre-production ### Thumbnail ![[My AI notetaking workflows.png]] ### Title 1. taking notes with ai (67) 2. ai note-taking (44) 3. notetaking for ai (90) 4. let ai take your notes (88) 5. notetaking with ai (88) 6. note-taking with ai (82) 7. note taking with ai (71) 8. speech to text with ai (79) 9. ai speech to text (87) 10. voice to text (60) 11. voice to text ai (73) 12. ai note taker (32) 13. ==ai notetaking workflow (88)== 14. ### Hook Just over a year ago, if you had asked me how I felt about AI and note-taking, I would have responded that I didn't want AI to have anything to do with my notes. Fast forward a year or so and, well, the world is different. And so am I. So here we are, at a point where I heavily rely on AI in many ways. Of the different ways I use AI, I think the easiest starting point is speech-to-text: using AI to convert my voice to something I can save in a text file. In this video, I'm going to show you three different levels of implementing speech-to-text for my notes--and I'll show you my workflows for every level. ### Structure #### Core idea Here's the way I'm currently thinking about AI's place in my notes. Nick Milo makes a distinction between note-*taking* and note-*making* this way: - note-taking is collecting: recording information, (if you're reading a book) paraphrasing what an author has said, highlighting - note-making is connecting: active thinking, engaging with the information, linking it to other ideas, thinking about how it fits in your PKM system I think the best use of AI right now is to help me with the note-taking part. I like to start with speech because that was previously a form of input that my PKM system couldn't take very much of, pre-AI. - You speak - AI transcribes it - It lands in your notes - AI can work with it #### Tier 1: Free - Use your phone's recording app. - iOS transcribes recordings on the Voice Memos app, and the Notes app does as well for newer Apple devices. - Samsung's built-in Voice Recorder app on Galaxy devices - ==Demo:== Drop audio into a transcription app: [Spokenly](https://spokenly.app/) - for Mac, Windows, and iOS - The friction is manual: remember to record, remember to transcribe, remember to paste - What you get: quick notes to yourself, captured instantly - Best for: People who want to get started as easily as possible, without paying for anything #### Tier 2: Paid - Level two: pay for the convenience layer - Collapses the first two steps — record, transcript appears, extra features like being able to ask the AI questions (sometimes live) or getting AI-generated summaries - Tools: [[Voicenotes]], ([[Otter.ai]]), ([[Letterly]]), [[Granola]], [[Gemini]] on [[Google Meet]], [[Zoom AI Companion]]. - ==Demo:== Granola Sync Obsidian plugin + macro (`QuickAdd: Macro - Link Granola`) - link [[Dungeon Crawler Carl 1-7 recap - Prepare for a Parade of Horribles]] to the Granola transcript - This is also on the Patreon vault! - Tradeoffs: - Your notes live in their system, not yours - Shutdown / pricing changes / acquisition all take your archive with them - The friction reduction is real — if it means you actually capture instead of intending to, worth a lot - Best for: People who want to capture meetings, games, or lectures #### Tier 3: Overkill level - Level three: my setup, a bit ridiculous, going to show it anyway - Hardware: [[Plaud]] - Small AI recorder, clips to phone or sits in pocket - Always running OR start deliberately for important conversations / walks - Can be used entirely locally, can be uploaded to their servers - Plaud Sync Obsidian plugin, but my fork of it - AI layer: - Iris (AI agent) watches those files - Every morning: reads previous day's transcripts + calendar + daily notes - Outputs: - Summary of what happened - Extracted tasks - Flags anything I said I wanted to remember - ==Demo:== [[2026-05-02#Daily Summary]] - This is also on the Patreon vault! - "Hey Iris" memos - Benefits: Don't think about it — just live and talk, it becomes part of my notes - Cons: Lack of privacy of people around you ### Outro - Core insight: voice is the lowest-friction capture method that exists - No stopping, no finding phone, no opening app, no typing - Just talk - System handles everything after that → friction is basically gone The real overkill thing here is that I still use tools at all three levels. I use Spokenly for dictating my notes at my desk, sometimes right into obsidian or sometimes into chat. I use granola for meeting notes and also increasingly for watching a video, and I use voice notes for more diary-type entries, and of course, I use plaud whenever I feel like it's ethical to do so, and especially when I'm traveling with my partner. My core insight here is that, at least for me, voice is the lowest friction capture method that exists. There's no stopping, no finding my phone, no opening an app, and no typing. So I just have to talk, which you might guess I find pretty easy. That means that the friction between thinking of something and writing it down is basically gone for me. Taking the notes in the first place is the most tedious part, and not having to do that means that when I'm in a meeting, I'm relying on a tool to faithfully track down what's being said. Meanwhile, I can just be present, and whatever notes I take are what *I* think of what I'm hearing--so it helps me start synthesizing faster. If you want more details about any of my workflows, let me know in the comments and I'll see what I can do. *_Arigatō gozaimashita! Mata kondo ne~_* ### Related videos and resources 🎙️ The Mechanics of Knowledge Management podcast episode where Malek interviewed me: https://malikalimoekhamedov.substack.com/p/nicole-van-der-hoeven-a-polymath Nick Milo: https://www.youtube.com/@LinkingYourThinking My Patreon (where I share the linking scripts and QuickAdd macros): https://patreon.com/nicolevdh Tier 1: Free Spokenly: https://spokenly.app NVIDIA Parakeet: https://huggingface.co/nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2 Qwen models: https://huggingface.co/Qwen Tier 2: Paid Granola: https://www.granola.ai Voicenotes: https://voicenotes.com Otter.ai: https://otter.ai 🧩 Granola Sync Obsidian plugin: https://github.com/tomelliot/obsidian-granola-sync 🧩 Voicenotes Sync Obsidian plugin: https://github.com/voicenotes-community/voicenotes-sync Bookborn (DCC recap channel): https://www.youtube.com/@Bookborn Tier 3: Overkill Plaud: https://plaudus.sjv.io/MA4GQN 🧩 Leonard Sellem's Plaud Sync plugin: https://github.com/leonardsellem/plaud-sync-for-obsidian 🧩 My fork of Plaud Sync: https://github.com/nicolevanderhoeven/plaud-sync-for-obsidian 🧩 The Obsidian BRAT plugin if you want to install my Plaud Sync fork: https://github.com/tfthacker/obsidian42-brat OpenClaw: https://openclaw.ai ### Pinned comment ``` ``` ### Timestamps 00:00 Intro ## Post-production - [x] Create captions using Rev, then edit them. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Take a thumbnail photo and create one for YouTube (1280 x 720). ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Add description. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Include the title and any keywords in the first few sentences, but in a natural way. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Add related videos and resources as links. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Add end screen. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Add cards if necessary. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Add chapters/timestamps for YouTube if longer than 5 minutes. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Add mid-roll ads/check monetization settings. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Add pinned comment. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Post video preview on Patreon. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [x] Schedule on YouTube. ✅ 2026-05-19 - [ ] Add video to relevant playlist(s), or create a playlist if necessary. - [x] Schedule on Mastodon. ✅ 2026-05-20 - [ ] Create a blog post on [site](https://nicolevanderhoeven.com). - [ ] Add to [video-database](obsidian://open?vault=obsidian-playbook&file=video-database%2FVideo%20database). - [ ] Add to other notes in my vault as appropriate. ## Transcript ![[Transcript - My AI Note-taking Workflows]]