Tana
p/tana
Put your notes to work with voice and AI
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My favorite Tana "LEGO® block"

Folks often think of Tana as having a "steep learning curve." And I get where that comes from—it's flexible and powerful, so there are a lot of different ways to set up workflows. But there's a specific relationship between supertags, fields, and searches that is simple to learn that I consider my fundamental Tana LEGO® block.


It works like this. If I want to see how two things relate—say, books and authors—I first create supertags for both. Then within the #book supertag I create a field called "Author" that draws its options from instances of the #author supertag. And in the #author supertag, I create a search called Books that finds all books by whatever author you're looking at.


It sets up something like this:

A Tale of Two Cities #book
- Author:: Charles Dickens #author

and

Charles Dickens #author
- Books by this Author (<- search)
  - A Tale of Two Cities #book (<- search result)
  - David Copperfield #book (<- search result)

The syntax of the search inside the #author supertag is
- #book
- Author:: PARENT

As in, find all books where the author is whatever author you're currently looking at.

This pattern is powerful, because its how I connect tasks to projects (Project field in #task, Tasks search in #project), or quotes to sources (Source field in #quote, Quotes search in #source), or discussion points to people (Person field in #discussion point, Topics to Discuss search in #person), etc.


The pattern is simple to learn, but many complicated-looking dashboards in Tana are little more than just a lot of these simple relationships working together.


I actually have a video coming out on Friday about how to set this up. It will be the culmination of my free Essential Tana Skills YouTube playlist, which you can check out here if you want: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGL797U3UcfO2bQm5tzJSny62qdVpj5bi.


Are there any simple Tana workflows—or even more detailed ones—that are especially valuable for you?

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Community Appreciation post 🙏
This week is a big week for us. After years of building in stealth, countless iterations, and invaluable feedback from all of you - Tana officially launched to the world. Thanks for the incredible help this week - and the last four years. One of our goals was to become Product of the Day, and we couldn't have done this without our community. This moment feels special. Not just because we’re finally launching, but because of how we got here. When we started building Tana, we envisioned reinventing how humans and computers work together. But we didn’t expect to find such an incredible community of pioneers, thinkers, and builders who would help shape that vision. I remember filling the Slack community with the first four members. Then we grew to 12. 25. 150. 500. Suddenly, I found myself stopping every 5 min. on my small evening runs to welcome the next community member. YOU - our 24,000+ Tanarians - have been nothing short of amazing. You’ve pushed the boundaries of what Tana can do. You’ve helped each other, shared insights, and created a thriving ecosystem of ideas. From complex workflows to powerful AI apps that feel like magic. You’ve celebrated with us and pushed back when needed. Every message in our community Slack's #share-your-tips-and-how-tos, every idea and help in #feedback, every bug report, every “aha!” moment shared - they’ve all contributed to making Tana what it is today. YOU haven’t just been early adopters; YOU’ve been co-creators of this journey. We still hope to become Product of the Week and Month, so if you haven’t already supported us, we’d love your support. Not just for the clicks and comments, but because your stories and experiences with Tana are the most powerful testament to what we’re building together. We want to share those stories with the world. This isn’t just a launch - it’s a liftoff. What comes next will be even more exciting. Voice-first workflows, customizable AI agents, and an entirely new paradigm for knowledge work. But first, we will spend some time polishing what we now have launched. And just like everything else we’ve built, we’ll build it together with you, our incredible community. Thank YOU for being the Tana engine. Let’s show the world what the future looks like! With deep gratitude, the Tana team.
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