Editor's Synopsis
Eric J. Ma describes how he built a personal knowledge management (PKM) system using Obsidian, plain text files, and AI coding agents to manage the cognitive load of leading two teams across multiple projects. His system centers on core note types — monthly bullet journals, structured meeting notes, people dossiers, and project control towers — all interlinked and searchable in a format accessible to both humans and AI.
The AI integration handles heavy lifting like parsing meeting transcripts, summarizing documents, extracting structure from Excel files, and generating PowerPoint decks from Markdown. Python scripts with inline dependency declarations power the automation, while a "sweep" workflow lets a coding agent update notes from source material with proper attribution. The result: his knowledge management overhead dropped from 30–40% of his time to under 10%, freeing him for deeper thinking. He emphasizes that plain text is a future-proof foundation for AI integration and encourages readers to experiment with their own systems rather than follow a rigid prescription.
