Michael von Hohnhorst

Capacities - A studio for your mind

Like an artist's studio, Capacities is a place for all your information. It’s your own studio to collect, connect and reflect – a place to make sense of the world and to create amazing things. It's a thinking environment for modern knowledge work.

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Michael von Hohnhorst
We built Capacities to help people organize their digital lives, be it work-related or for personal projects, interests, and ideas. We built our software for individuals and it is extremely important to us to always be in touch with our users and the community. They have helped shape the product tremendously, and a lot of our users appreciate how they can actually influence the product development through their feedback and ideas. You’re more than welcome to join our community on Discord (https://discord.gg/8CvzmtkD). What’s the core idea behind Capacities? The hierarchical file system that was developed half a century ago is not suitable for creative, interconnected knowledge work of today. We realized that there’s a big need for a powerful networked note-taking tool that is still easy to use and beautiful to reach a large group of people. Instead of folders, we offer flexible tags and bi-directional linking between content. So you don’t have to think about what folder to put things in, just think about what they relate to. Instead of files, we organize content and media as colorful objects. You can determine, what types of objects you want, and what properties and look they have! If you read a lot, just create “Books” to organize your reading notes. If you want to keep track of all your ideas, use “Idea” objects. And then simply link or embed them anywhere you need them. Think of Notion databases, but less containerized and more flexible. We call this “objective-taking”. And on top, all you do is automatically mapped to a central calendar with daily notes, which will become your daily working hub and let’s you browse your work over time. The core product of Capacities is and will remain free. We plan to introduce Capacities Pro later this year. If you already want to support us and our vision now, you can become a Capacities Believer. Being a believer will also get you access to any Pro features as soon as they're available. As a fully bootstrapped company and a small team of 3, feedback from our users and community is crucial and a huge part of where the product is now! Based on feedback and suggestions from our users we ship major updates and new features 1-2 times each month. And we're just getting started, there are exciting things ahead! For example, we built Capacities with the enormous potential of AI in mind. Our AI integration is currently being developed and will launch soon! Looking forward to your feedback and happy to be here on Product Hunt!
Sheldon_alternative
@mvhohnhorst congrats, seems super cool, can you briefly tell the your difference between notion, heptabase, obsidian or scrintal?
Michael von Hohnhorst
@josooba_at_fabrie Sure! It's similar to Notion in terms of block-based editing and databases but has the linking powers of networked note-taking tools (such as Obsidian or Roam) with transclusion, contextual backlinks, and support for tagging (with very visual pages to browse your tags). It also has daily notes built-in in a calendar-like layout. Then, our concept of objects is similar to supertags in Tana where you assign a type to your content to make it distinguishable and to give it certain properties. However, it's not a whiteboarding tool like Scrintal or Heptabase, but it has great support for all kinds of media. Hope that helps!
Michael von Hohnhorst
@ianwdj we built our own text editor from scratch. Handling all the edge cases and the support for different browsers was something we definitely underestimated.
Michael von Hohnhorst
@ianwdj Our user feedback system (we use canny.io) helped a ton!
James Anson
@mvhohnhorst congrats Michael. I’m an obsidian user and I can’t tell you enough how much I’m enjoying your product. Keep up the excellent work.
Nicolo S
Congrats on the launch Steffen and Michael 👏🚀 I discovered Capacities a few months back and was blown away by how polished and innovative their approach to note taking is, their focus on the user and their community is unparalleled!
Ricardo Liberato
🔌 Plugged in
Capacities has a like if notion and roam research had a beautiful, very user friendly child and than that child got given superpowers. A great PKM, highly recommend it.
Nicolas Bosshardt
This app is the biggest game changer I’ve used in several years! This app goes WAY beyond note taking and takes PKM (‘Personal knowledge management’) to the next level! A smartly thought way to create 'objects' instead of folders & notes, combined with a powerful way to link notes (including graph view) and tagging allow you to tailor the app to pretty much any use for storing knowledge (work notes, personal knowledge, journaling, you nae it!)
Michael von Hohnhorst
@nicolas_bosshardt Thanks for sharing your experience, Nicolas!
Chris Klein
Congrats on the launch! Been using Capacities for *well* over a year now, and knew there was something special about it when I first stumbled upon it. To be completely honest, I was worried about the longevity of the project when I first discovered it, as the (perceived) community and number of users was small (like I said, perceived) at the time. So glad that I was so wrong and y'all have continued growing and innovating, at an incredible pace, I might add. Such a polished product (and team)! Can't wait to see where y'all go and wish you continued growth and success!
Michael von Hohnhorst
@undefinedprocess Hi Chris, thanks for sticking with us for so long and sharing your experience here! Much appreciated. We're more motivated than ever and super excited about what's coming next. We have a lot of things in our pipeline. Stay tuned. :)
Melad Javadi
Moved to this from obsidian some months ago and have gone all in for now. It still has some issues but the ideas and direction have me pretty excited for this apps future
Michele Bugiolacchio
moved to capacities a while back, and it's one of the most promising tools in the space, it is already working great and I look forward to its growth!
Michael von Hohnhorst
@mbs Thanks, Michele!
Jan
I have been following the progress of Capacities for a long time now, and I'm amazed at how flexible and dedicated they are in building this product together with their Discord Community, to really create *the* product their users want.
Steffen Bleher
Thanks, @jan_niklas1! :) And thanks for all your ideas and thoughts along the way :)
David Oliver
I gave Obsidian a friendly thank you but goodbye and welcomed Capacities.io with open arms, and the reason? A desire to break free from the traditional shackles of files and folders. You see, Capacities.io is rather like a modern, savvy chameleon. It effortlessly adapts to various media forms: be it a weblink, some text, an image, a PDF, a video, or a sound clip. These different elements can interact, mingle, and create a vibrant knowledge graph. It's a pretty neat trick, if you ask me, and a definite upgrade from Obsidian. And here's the kicker - it's so intuitive that you won't need anything as sophisticated as Tiago Forte's PARA method to stay on top of your organisation game. Not much effort is required at all. And the cherry on top? There's no need for plugins. Capacities.io has matured just right, boasting a variety of in-house features, such as an in-built calendar. So, you won't have to turn detective to find the plugin that will do what you want. The plugin frustration I used to face with Obsidian, you know, when developers would drop support? That's a thing of the past with Capacities. So, here's to a smoother, more streamlined digital journey!
Michael von Hohnhorst
@davidoliver Thanks for the detailed comment, David!
Nick from FirstHR
It looks very promising. Good luck!
Audiencon
I absolutely love it! Congratulations, @mvhohnhorst! You deserve a huge round of applause!
Michael von Hohnhorst
@audiencon Thanks for the kind words, Audiencon! 🙏
Dmitriy Pegov
Great job, my congrats to your team!
Michael von Hohnhorst
@dmitriy_pegov Thanks, Dmitriy!
Beth
This is an incredible note-taking app based on an innovative and thoughtful approach to knowledge management. Its object-based approach allows us to enjoy the benefits of storing in databases, but the linking capabilities take that further, and let us create a web of knowledge with ease. My favourite features are the page layouts, the different embed views for linked content, and the automatic record of what content was created on a day (found in the daily note). This allows me to take control of the knowledge I curate and I can customise the approach along the way. Knowing that I can then scroll back through my daily note to see what I was doing over a period of time is equally fantastic. Overall, Capacities is a genuine joy to use every day and that was evident within the first hours of testing it. Everyone should check out Capacities, I doubt they'll regret it!
Michael von Hohnhorst
@pkmbeth Thank you so much for your detailed ideas, Beth!
Chris Messina
Top Hunter
?makers will you offer a data export that is interoperable with any other services?
Michael von Hohnhorst
@chrismessina There already is a bulk export feature of all your content as standard markdown files with all media files attached. Bulk import from other apps will be added later this year. Import and export of individual markdown, word, HTML, and LaTeX files is also supported. And there is a PDF export. :) For tools such as ReadWise (reading highlights) or task managers, we're tending more towards API driven uni- or (eventually) bi-directional synching between Capacities and those services. Hope that helps! :)
Chris Messina
Top Hunter
@mvhohnhorst rad! Looking forward to trying this out.
Jon Soini
Been using Capacities for a very short time, but for me it's the best blend of all the tools I wished I were using, but aren't for a reason or another: Notion: I love the databases, structure format, but usability 'gotchas' or the lack of mobile input or linked items keeps me from using it long-term Obsidian: Having to manage my own installs, too fiddly to make it what I want, and the mobile app not having mobile-first features keep me from using or recommending it, despite it being amazing desktop software. Roam & others: Eh... I need a mobile app and it seems some of them have burned their userbases with poor product decisions. What I like about Capacities: It has the right amount of 'Obsidian + Roam + Notes + Notion', I can leave notes, link them easily, but not worry about the fiddly management of a client on various platforms. It has mobile capture, I can send to Capacitie's mobile app, or use whatsapp chat to capture a mobile link (very key for me). Enough structure if I want it, but I can also just ship it a link, and it remembers it in the 'weblinks' collection, if I don't send it somewhere specific. And this was built with 3 people? Take my money, and hopefully there's a bright future for Capacities.
Michael von Hohnhorst
@jon_soini Thanks for the feedback and for sharing your ideas in such detail, Jon, much appreciated!
Bernhard Wittmann
Have been using and following capacities for a while now, and I am always amazed on how many cool features and things Michael and Steffen ship all the time. Can only recommend to everyone, to at least check capacities out.
Iren from FirstHR
Love it! My huge congrats Michael!
Oleg from FirstHR
I have my vote guys! Congrats on the launch!
Michael von Hohnhorst
@oleg_eltsov Thank you so much, Oleg!
Marc Bleher
The best note app I have used so far! Much smarter and more integrated into everyday life than notion! I used the app daily to save ideas and create content. Thanks 🙏🏼🔥
Michael von Hohnhorst
@marc_bleher Thanks for the feedback, Marc! 🔥
Sahil Kumar
congratulations 👏🎉 I like the capacities idea , great work team 👏
Michael von Hohnhorst
@demondoss Thanks, Sahil! Yes, we think objects are a great way to think about your digital content.