sources

the catalog

every claim on this site carries source ids that resolve here. type marks the evidence role; dates keep the precision the source gave.

1. 2019roam research — a note-taking tool for networked thoughtroam research · roam researchthe product site and its own description of the tool.primarysrc-roam-site
2. ~2020the roam research white paperroam research · roam researchroam's own statement of the thesis: a directed graph instead of a file tree, with bayesian and collaborative ambitions that mostly never shipped. the page lives inside roam's js-rendered help graph; a readable export sits at heckler.roam.garden/@white-paper.primarysrc-roam-whitepaper
3. 2020-01-18roam: why i love it and how i use itnat eliason · nat eliasonthe article most often credited with triggering the 2020 sign-up wave; eliason later reported it drove meaningful referral revenue.communitysrc-eliason-why-i-love-it
4. 2020how to use roam research: a tool for metacognitionness labs · anne-laure le cunffthe 'tool for metacognition' guide that onboarded much of the first wave.communitysrc-nesslabs-roam
5. 2020getting compound interest on your thoughts with conor white-sullivanness labs · anne-laure le cunffconor's own framing in interview: compound interest on your thoughts; good ideas come from ideas having sex.interviewsrc-nesslabs-conor-interview
6. 2020roam research faqness labs · anne-laure le cunffthe pricing record: $15/month, $165/year, and the $500 five-year believer plan.communitysrc-nesslabs-roam-faq
7. 2020roam research: the limitless toolthe generalist · mario gabrielea long, favorable company profile published near the peak of the hype wave.reportingsrc-generalist-roam
8. 2020roam is a note-taking tool, and a dream of a better selfbuilt in sfthe feature that documented #roamcult as a genuine community phenomenon and traced the bush-to-roam lineage in the popular press.reportingsrc-builtin-roamcult
9. 2020-09-11a $200 million seed valuation for roamthe informationthe scoop that fixed the public number: ~$9m at ~$200m, roughly 25x the median seed valuation. paywalled.reportingsrc-information-200m
10. 2020-09-28roam research raises $9m at a $200m valuationtechcrunchthe techcrunch writeup that carried the round to the general tech audience.reportingsrc-roam-200m
11. 2020-07-29how roam research got their first 1000 customersfirst 1000 (medium) · ali abou el attathe 'low floor, high ceiling' product philosophy and the enterprise-first start.reportingsrc-first-1000
12. 2023-09-11why note-taking apps don't make us smarterplatformer · casey newtonthe marquee postmortem by a believer: 'i waited for the insights to come. and waited. and waited.' notes designed for storage, not sparking insights.reportingsrc-newton-platformer
13. 2023-02-03a note on the cargo cult of zettelkastenboffosocko · chris aldrichthe cargo-cult diagnosis: users follow the motions of zettelkasten for months, don't see the promised gains, and quietly give up.communitysrc-aldrich-cargo-cult
14. ~2025why i left roam research after 5 yearsyu-wenhao.com · wenhao yua five-year believer ($500 plan, $1k investor) leaves for obsidian: 'ai changed everything, and my data was locked in the cloud.'communitysrc-yu-why-i-left
15. ~2023i wish i knew how to quit roam researchinvesting101 (substack) · kyle harrisonthe loyalist counterweight: roam 'was not building a productivity app' while most users wanted one.communitysrc-harrison-quit
16. ~2025zettelkasten, honestlynotesnudgethe cleanest evidence audit: 'the system will surprise you with connections' is the least-supported claim; only survivors write essays.communitysrc-notesnudge-zettelkasten
17. ~2022moving from roam research to obsidianmickmel (substack) · mickmela representative migration note: price, privacy, and sync driving the move to obsidian.communitysrc-mickmel-migration
18. 2021-01conaw on sync issues and the state of roamthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanconor's own january 2021 thread on sync bugs and performance — 'roam is far from done' — plus the subreddit friction it answered. captured via threadreader.archivesrc-conaw-sync-thread
19. 1945-07as we may thinkthe atlantic · vannevar bushthe 1945 memex essay every networked-thought tool cites as origin.primarysrc-as-we-may-think
20. 1962-10augmenting human intellect: a conceptual frameworkdoug engelbart institute · douglas engelbartaugmenting human intellect as an explicit program — computers as thinking partners, six years before the mother of all demos.primarysrc-engelbart-augment
21. 1974computer lib / dream machinesinternet archive (scan) · ted nelsonhypertext, hypermedia, and 'everything is deeply intertwingled' — plus transclusion, the ancestor of roam's block reference.archivesrc-computer-lib
22. 1995-06the curse of xanaduwired · gary wolfthe cautionary precedent: xanadu as the longest-running vaporware project in computing — vision shipped partially, ambition unreached.reportingsrc-curse-of-xanadu
23. 1995wikiwikiwebwikipediaward cunningham's 1995 wiki: every page editable, every camelcase word a link that creates the page if missing — bottom-up structure made nearly free.communitysrc-wikiwikiweb
24. 1981communicating with slip boxesluhmann.surge.sh (translation) · niklas luhmannthe slip-box as a partner that surprises you — and the caveat roam lived out: the box needs years to reach critical mass, until then it is a mere container.primarysrc-luhmann-slip-boxes
25. 2017how to take smart notesnorthbooks · sönke ahrensthe book that popularized luhmann's zettelkasten for the roam generation.primarysrc-smart-notes
26. 2003history and acknowledgments (org manual)orgmode.orgorg-mode's own history: a plain-text outline mode born in 2003 — the grammar roam rebuilt as a product.primarysrc-org-history
27. 2010-11-04turn your entire life into a list with workflowytechcrunch · alexia tsotsisworkflowy's 2010 launch: proof a whole product could be one infinite, zoomable list.reportingsrc-workflowy-launch
28. 2003about this particular outliner: outliner historyatpm · ted goransonthe desktop-outliner lineage — thinktank, more, acta — that roam's surface descends from.communitysrc-outliner-history
29. 1998hypertext gardenseastgate · mark bernsteinthe first recorded use of 'digital garden' (1998) and a deliberate argument for irregular, curated link structure; tinderbox put agents inside notes in 2002.primarysrc-hypertext-gardens
30. 2004the story of tiddlywikitiddlywiki.com · jeremy rustonthe personal wiki as one self-contained html file of reusable tiddlers — quasi-transclusion in 2004.primarysrc-tiddlywiki-story
31. 2015-10-17the garden and the stream: a technopastoralhapgood · mike caulfieldthe garden-vs-stream frame that became digital-garden canon: topology against serialization.primarysrc-garden-and-stream
32. 2018-07augmenting long-term memorymichael nielsen · michael nielsenspaced repetition and memory systems as tools for thought — the intellectual neighbor roam sat next to.primarysrc-augmenting-memory
33. 2019how can we develop transformative tools for thought?numinous productions · andy matuschak & michael nielsenthe essay that named the field roam came to represent — and warned that good tools for thought arise mostly as byproducts of serious work.primarysrc-transformative-tft
34. 2019evergreen notesnotes.andymatuschak.org · andy matuschakthe canonical public note corpus: 'better note-taking misses the point; what matters is better thinking'; titles as apis; notes densely linked.primarysrc-evergreen-notes
35. 2018-10of digital streams, campfires and gardenstomcritchlow.com · tom critchlowthe indie-hacker instantiation: streams, campfires, gardens, and the jekyll wikifolder — building your own garden before roam sold one.primarysrc-critchlow-gardens
36. 2020a brief history & ethos of the digital gardenmaggieappleton.com · maggie appletonthe digital-garden history that places roam inside a longer tradition of public learning.communitysrc-digital-gardens
37. 2019-04local-first softwareink & switch · kleppmann, wiggins, van hardenberg, mcgranaghanthe counter-ideology roam violated: you own your data, in spite of the cloud — the banner obsidian and logseq recruited under.primarysrc-local-first
38. 2017building a second brainbuilding a second brain · tiago fortecode and para turned pkm into a mass aspiration — the demand roam rode. eliason's verdict: 'roam is v4.'primarysrc-building-second-brain
39. 2021tools for thought rocksbmann consulting · boris mannthe tools-for-thought community layer — a monthly series running july 2021 to march 2023 that neatly brackets the wave's peak.communitysrc-tft-rocks
40. 2023-07-01file over appstephango.com · steph angoobsidian's ceo on why files outlive apps — in the agent era it reads as prophetic: plain markdown is the substrate agents already read.primarysrc-file-over-app
41. 2020obsidian — a private and flexible writing appobsidianthe local-first competitor that won the pragmatists while roam won the evangelists — first beta march 30, 2020, free, plain markdown.primarysrc-obsidian
42. 2020logseq/logseqgithubthe open-source outliner clone (agpl, local markdown/org files) that absorbed roam's most cost-sensitive users; its readme credits roam, org-mode, tiddlywiki, and workflowy.primarysrc-logseq
43. ~2022logseq raises $4.1mlogseq bloglogseq's $4.1m raise from collison, friedman, lütke, and dave winer — explicitly on users 'jumping ship from roam.'primarysrc-logseq-raise
44. 2020athensresearch/athensgithubthe cautionary open-source clone: yc w21, 6.3k stars, unmaintained since ~2023 — cloning the graph was never the hard part.primarysrc-athens
45. 2023tana — the all-in-one workspace with supertagstanathe supertag successor built by ex-roam-community figures, launched on the explicit promise of finishing what roam started.primarysrc-tana
46. ~2024tana raises $14m series atana blogtana's $14m series a as an 'ai-native workspace' — the category's pivot to agents made literal.primarysrc-tana-raise
47. ~2025the next chapter for tanatana blog'your graph is the context and conversations are your prompts… your knowledge graph builds itself every time you talk.'primarysrc-tana-next-chapter
48. ~2023automatically add backlinks using aireflect · alex maccawthe labor handoff as a button: 'decorate my writing with backlinks.'primarysrc-reflect-backlinks
49. 2022-11-10mem's note-taking app plans to use aithe verge · david piercemem's ai-first pitch — 'a google search bar but for all nonpublic information' — and the memex homage in the name.reportingsrc-mem-verge
50. 2022-06-02capacities launch threadhacker newsobject-based notes: typed objects instead of pages — structure by type and relation rather than folders.communitysrc-capacities
51. 2026-04-04llm-wiki.mdgithub gist · andrej karpathythe agent-era restatement: an llm-maintained markdown wiki as 'a persistent, compounding artifact.' 'obsidian is the ide; the llm is the programmer; the wiki is the codebase.'primarysrc-karpathy-llm-wiki
52. 2024-02-13graphrag: unlocking llm discovery on narrative private datamicrosoft research · larson & truittmicrosoft's graphrag: llm-extracted knowledge graphs plus community summaries beat baseline rag on global sensemaking questions.primarysrc-graphrag
53. 2025-12ai's trillion-dollar opportunity: context graphsfoundation capital · jaya gupta & ashu gargthe enterprise restatement: agents need decision traces — exceptions, overrides, precedents — captured into context graphs.primarysrc-context-graphs
54. 2024-11-25introducing the model context protocolanthropicanthropic's open socket between agents and data — the plumbing that makes agent-readable knowledge bases practical.primarysrc-mcp
55. ~2025look ma, no rag! building agent-native knowledge systemsblog.pollack.aithe links-beat-embeddings argument at project scale: index files as routing tables, let the agent follow links in two or three hops.communitysrc-no-rag
56. ~2025benchmarking ai agent memory: is a filesystem all you need?lettathe strongest counter-evidence: a plain agent with file tools hit 74% on the locomio memory benchmark — files plus grep rival specialized memory systems.primarysrc-letta-benchmark
57. ~2025introducing context repositorieslettagit-backed agent memory: markdown plus frontmatter projected into a real repo the agent greps and commits — roam's data model reinvented as infrastructure.primarysrc-letta-context-repos
58. 2025agents.mdagents.mdthe cross-vendor convention — 'a readme for agents' across codex, cursor, jules, copilot, and 60k+ projects.primarysrc-agents-md
59. ~2026agent memory engineeringnicolasbustamante.com · nicolas bustamantethe audit caveat: production agent memory converges on small markdown taxonomies, and 'remember this' behavior is harness-trained — structure matters less than habit.communitysrc-agent-memory-engineering
60. ~2026karpathy's obsidian wiki broke at 100 articlesdev.to · zaferdacethe counter-lesson: at ~100 articles an llm-maintained wiki exceeds usable context and the model starts confidently fabricating cross-note relationships.communitysrc-llm-wiki-broke
61. ~2025why your second brain is deadself.mdthe bluntest version of the against case: 'the ai does not care about your backlinks… the expensive operation became free.'communitysrc-second-brain-dead
62. 2026hraness/wordcellgithub · hranessa knowledge base for coding agents built from markdown, backlinks, semantic search, and git context — markdown and git authoritative, indexes as replaceable views.primarysrc-wordcell
63. 2026wordcell docswordcell.io · hranesswordcell's docs: context, backlinks, and history per code path, installed as an agent skill.primarysrc-wordcell-docs
64. 2025sponge — a personal library for researchsponge.computer · hranessa knowledge harness where agents research against a saved corpus — cite the passages used, check claims against the text — while people steer, review, and control release.primarysrc-sponge
65. 2026hraness/ohgithub · hranessan ontology kernel for agentic research: content-addressed entity, statement, assertion, and evidence records with an append-only operation log; indexes derived and rebuildable.primarysrc-oh
66. ~2026what happened to roam research? magic, then frictionbuildfirstbraina representative 'what happened to roam' essay — likely ai-assisted, used for the genre's shape rather than its claims: 'connections you do not understand are not understanding.'communitysrc-what-happened-roam
67. 2011-10-03huffington post acquires localocracytechcrunchthe acquisition that anchors conaw's pre-roam history: localocracy — 'everyone is an expert about something' — sold to aol's huffington post media group.reportingsrc-localocracy-acquisition
68. 2011-10umass start-up website bought by huffington postmassachusetts daily collegianthe student-paper record: umass amherst founders, ages, and lead engineer jay voice.reportingsrc-localocracy-collegian
69. 2012conor white-sullivan author archiveobamawhitehouse.archives.gov · conor white-sullivanconaw's obama-era white house blog archive — participatory democracy writing under his own name: 'an anthropology major … in 2008 founded localocracy.'archivesrc-whitehouse-archive
70. 2010-07-29tedxboston — conor white-sullivan — localocracytedxboston / youtube · conor white-sullivanthe earliest surviving conaw talk video: localocracy as an online town common — collective intelligence a decade before roam.archivesrc-tedx-localocracy
71. 2009ignite amherst talk on tech, media, and political powerignite amherst (shared via twitter) · conor white-sullivanfall 2009, five minutes and twenty slides: 'an abundance of hope and the reckless confidence of a 21 year old. still stand by most of this.'archivesrc-ignite-amherst
72. 2019-09-05how i met my co-founder (origin thread)threadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe first-person founding story: meeting joshua brown at 42, the prototype, the co-founder offer — and 'just started bringing in users from the public a couple months ago.'archivesrc-conaw-origin-thread
73. 2018the roam research white paper (mirror)roam garden (mirror) · conor white-sullivanthe readable export of the white paper — 'we wrote this white paper in winter of 2017/2018'; co-authored with journalist richard meadows, who became roam's first investor.archivesrc-whitepaper-mirror
74. 2019welcome to roam — founder introductionroam garden (mirror) · conor white-sullivanthe founder introduction inside roam's own public help graph — ending with his personal gmail and 'much love — conor.' the medium demonstrating itself.archivesrc-welcome-to-roam
75. 2018-12-25365 propositionsthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe living thread-as-publication: hundreds of numbered daily propositions on thinking, consent, communal living, and the limits of thinkable thoughts — public thinking before the product.archivesrc-365-propositions
76. 2019-02-23why evernote is a terrible second brainthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe 45-tweet thesis the white paper itself links as 'related twitter thread': 'writing isn't just a tool for communication. first and foremost, writing is a tool for thinking.'archivesrc-evernote-rant
77. 2019-05-18the zettelkasten threadthreadreader app · conor white-sullivan'the zettelkasten — it's like the gtd for intellectual progress' — the thread that tied roam to luhmann and opened invites, naming joshua brown as co-builder.archivesrc-zettelkasten-thread
78. 2021-01-22trust in the gatekeepers / all time lowthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe continuity thread: 'trust in the gatekeepers / all time low' — 'the answer is not a new channel. it's a new format, a new medium, with a new power structure.' 'if had been no @localocracy there would be no @roamresearch.'archivesrc-gatekeepers-thread
79. 2020-09-19api, fellowship, and the roam fundthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe peak ecosystem-builder thread days after the seed: new backend, api and multiplayer, the roam fellowship (first fellow dhrumil mehta), and $2m for a roam fund — $1m balance sheet, $1m option pool.archivesrc-post-raise-thread
80. 2021-01-23roamgames announcementthreadreader app · conor white-sullivan$10,000 every two weeks for three months to community builders 'whose public work pushes the frontier the farthest' — judged on intermediate packets and growing the commons.archivesrc-roamgames-thread
81. 2021-01-24the conor mcgregor / 'i was broke' threadthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe autobiographical thread: sold localocracy to aol at 23, 'felt like a fraud,' then five broke years building roam v1 — the thing that convinced meadows to invest and josh to join.archivesrc-mcgregor-broke
82. 2021-12-29the ceo confessionalthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe 29-tweet capstone: 'three times i've written drafts of this thread in my roam, and three times i've failed to publish it' — the hidden agenda of localocracy, 'anti-role modal for roam culture,' and 'the reddit revolutionaries were actually right.'archivesrc-ceo-confessional
83. 2021-05-06why i said no to roadmapsthreadreader app · conor white-sullivan'why i said no to roadmaps' — the map-of-questions doctrine, plus an acknowledged dead roadmap page: 'dangers of link-rot.'archivesrc-roadmaps-thread
84. 2021-04-08the local-first architecture threadthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe candid 2017-architecture thread: roam still ran the local-first, event-stream backend he built at the start — 'like changing the engine on an airplane in flight.'archivesrc-architecture-thread
85. 2021-04-16roam depot and the e2ee bountythreadreader app · conor white-sullivanroam depot 'this week, if god wills it, inshallah' — revenue share for plugin authors and a $10k e2ee bounty. the depot shipped fifteen months later.archivesrc-depot-e2ee-thread
86. 2021-10-04the subreddit bans threadthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanconor's own long-form explanation of banning critics from r/roamresearch — the founder-moderation flashpoint.archivesrc-subreddit-bans
87. 2022-07-10the local-first defensethreadreader app · conor white-sullivan'roam was literally built local first!' — the 2022 technical-identity defense against the clone narrative: in-memory frontend database, offline from day one.archivesrc-localfirst-defense
88. 2022-07-28the apple notes quipthreadreader app · conor white-sullivan'if i was intelligent enough to accomplish my goals with apple notes i would never have needed to build roam. … if you're smart enough to solve all your problems in apple notes, i question your ambition.'archivesrc-apple-notes
89. 2021-05-19the lambda school / anti-college threadthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe flagship anti-college thread: 'strongly prefer my kids wind up going to ls vs debt-shackling college' — the credentialism controversy's source text.archivesrc-lambda-thread
90. 2021-05-26the #roamcult theology threadthreadreader app · conor white-sullivan'the thing people actually fall in love with with roam are the ideas, memories, and work they put into it' — the cult theology at its most sincere.archivesrc-roamcult-love
91. 2022-01the #roamcult disavowal reversalthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanconor calls disavowing #roamcult 'one of my worst mistakes of 2021' — the internal identity crisis documented in his own words.archivesrc-disavowal-reversal
92. 2026@conaw creator archiveatlas.fm · conor white-sullivanthe atlas.fm creator archive: 52 tweets, 7 podcasts, 38 videos indexed with dates and captured engagement counts.archivesrc-atlas-conaw
93. 2024-10@conaw profile mirrortweetlook · conor white-sullivanthe profile mirror showing the late-era state: new hampshire location, sparse posts — an october 2024 artifact captured.archivesrc-tweetlook-conaw
94. 2019-12-17interview with conor white-sullivan, founder of roamforte labs · tiago fortedecember 2019: an hour of demo and debate on knowledge management, privacy, and security — conor called it 'first time i've publicly spoken about roam!'interviewsrc-forte-interview
95. 2020-05-08conor white-sullivan on 20vcthe twenty minute vc · harry stebbings'roam is not about taking better notes'; low floors and high ceilings; hires for grit and autodidacts; lives with the team; the tesla go-to-market.interviewsrc-20vc
96. 2020-05creating tools for networked thoughtventure stories (village global) · erik torenbergthe influences stated plainly: nielsen's reinventing discovery, adler's syntopicon reading as roam's origin, roam versus twitter/github/notion.interviewsrc-venture-stories
97. 2021-07-13networked thought with conor white-sullivanthe quest pod · justin kanthe two-part autobiographical interview: the anthropology degree, nine months embedded in evangelical communities, collective intelligence, 'excel for thoughts.'interviewsrc-quest-pod
98. 2023-03-02collective intelligence with conor white-sullivanmetamuse (muse) · adam wiggins & mark mcgranaghanthe late retrospective: severe adhd, roam as working-memory extension, 'program your own mind.' episode page 404s now; date verified via podcast mirrors.interviewsrc-metamuse
99. 2018-07-18roam demo, july 18 2018youtube · conor white-sullivanthe earliest dated public roam demo found — a working product a year before the public beta.archivesrc-demo-2018
100. 2019-12-20the cannonical roam demo — complete versionyoutube · conor white-sullivanthe flagship gtd-flavored demo the help graph called best-of.archivesrc-canonical-demo
101. 2020-01-10roam research on product huntproduct huntthe launch-channel record: #2 product of the day, 363 upvotes, 69 comments — 'easy as a doc, powerful as a graph database.'communitysrc-producthunt
102. 2020-05-05roam to pause new sign-upsmedium · francesco d'alessiothe waitlist moment documented: a thomas frank video drove a sign-up surge, a data-loss incident followed, and the gates closed.communitysrc-waitlist-pause
103. 2020-05-24roam newsletter: gates reopeningroam newsletter (substack)the community newsletter's record of the gates reopening may 23 — paid users prioritized, beta users comped.communitysrc-roam-newsletter-gates
104. 2020-06roam research's cult packaging strategygood better best (substack) · rob litterstthe definitive decode of trial/pro/believer pricing as deliberate cult mechanics — syndicated to paddle as 'the cult packaging playbook.'reportingsrc-cult-packaging
105. 2020-06-10so, i went with roam research and am a true believerbaty.net · jack batythe believer's ambivalence in one post: the $30/mo rumor made him 'twitchy' — then he paid the $500 anyway.communitysrc-baty-believer
106. 2020-07-27roam reaches $1m arr in 6 weeksindie hackers · rosie sherrythe ~$1m arr report — six weeks after paid plans launched. community-sourced; roam never officially published revenue.reportingsrc-indie-hackers-arr
107. 2020-09-11roam research form dsec edgarthe official filing: roam research, inc. (cik 0001824172), form d filed september 11, 2020 — the hard anchor under the $200m story.primarysrc-sec-form-d
108. 2020-09-14roam research could be the future of note-takingthe hustle · trung t. phan'roam research could be the future of note-taking': profitable, 11 staff, five yc rejections — the raise set beside notion's $2b and coda's $636m.reportingsrc-hustle-roam
109. 2020-09-18roam's road aheadevery (divinations) · nathan baschezthe '200x arr' analysis and the 'half of tech twitter' reaction framing — the valuation discourse's sharpest contemporaneous read.communitysrc-roams-road-ahead
110. 2020-04-10why roam is coolevery (divinations) · nathan baschezthe 'culty' appeal and the learning curve as status marker — embeds conor's 'not quite culty enough' tweet.communitysrc-why-roam-cool
111. 2020-06-26the notetaking cold warevery (superorganizers) · dan shipperthe forte-versus-conor philosophical split — para against networked notes — the genre-defining comparison of the hype era.communitysrc-notetaking-cold-war
112. 2022-02-12the fall of roamevery (superorganizers) · dan shipperthe canonical departure essay by a former daily user: crufty links, slow velocity, weak mobile, 'well-documented community issues.'communitysrc-fall-of-roam
113. 2021roam wefunder campaign pagewefunder (wayback)the campaign page, archived: $1,256,376 from 760 investors, leeds ut hq, ai-safety-community bootstrapping, and a 'reasons not to invest' section disclosing crypto treasury and campus-buying plans.archivesrc-wefunder-archive
114. 2021-04roam research crowdfunding campaign oversubscribedbusiness insiderthe customer-investor moment: $500k target oversubscribed in under an hour, ~$1.6m committed in a day, open only to pre-2021 users.reportingsrc-bi-wefunder
115. 2021–2026roam change logroamdocs.fyi (mirror)the dated feature history — depot, encryption, apis, mobile, the 2024 attack — mirrored from roam's own help graph (not roam's domain).archivesrc-roamdocs-changelog
116. 2022-05-19roam-research/roam-depotgithubthe extension-marketplace plumbing, public since may 2022.primarysrc-roam-depot-repo
117. 2026roam-research/roam-toolsgithubthe official mcp server and cli — @roam-research/roam-mcp and roam-cli connecting claude/cursor-style agents to a graph via the desktop app's local api. the most substantive ai-era product line roam has shipped.primarysrc-roam-tools
118. 2026roam-tools changeloggithubthe rapid-cadence record: 0.3.x in february to 0.11.0 by late august 2026 — split packages, semantic search, extension-registered ai tools at local api 1.1.5.primarysrc-roam-tools-changelog
119. 2021-06i annotate 2021 noteshyperphor (ammdi)i annotate 2021: conaw on a panel beside ward cunningham, readwise, memex, org-mode, and logseq — 'roam is not about note-taking,' the team 'a few dozen distributed people.'communitysrc-i-annotate
120. 2024-05-12what comes after roam's renaissance?lesswrong · itay dreyfusthe post-peak community's own postmortem: 'the hype was replaced by dramas, scandals, and rants' — and loyalists praising the 'lack of new features.'communitysrc-lesswrong-renaissance
121. 2020-11a book club like no otherhey world · ash chedrinthe roam book club story: 1,700+ signups and ~200 simultaneous editors — multiplayer as community ritual and stress test.communitysrc-book-club
122. 2019-11-04roam: tool for thinkinghacker newsthe earliest sizable hacker news discussion of the roam beta — 123 points, mostly curiosity.communitysrc-hn-tool-for-thinking
123. 2020-01-21roam: why i love it and how i use it (discussion)hacker newsthe largest early hn thread — 288 points on the eliason essay, converts and skeptics arguing in the same thread.communitysrc-hn-eliason
124. 2020-04-05stop taking regular notes; use a zettelkasten insteadeugeneyan.com · eugene yanthe zettelkasten-resurgence essay that rode and amplified the roam moment — 785 hn points.communitysrc-eugene-zettelkasten
125. 2020-06-28foam: open-source roam alternativehacker newsfoam — the open-source roam-like for vs code — takes 699 hn points within weeks of the pricing launch: the biggest competitor-side thread of the era.communitysrc-foam-hn
126. 2020-04-03org-roam: rudimentary roam replica with org-modehacker newsorg-roam: the emacs community clones roam inside weeks — early evidence the idea was bigger than the product.communitysrc-org-roam-hn
127. 2020-07-19tired of note-taking appsakkshaya.blog · akkshayathe early 'the tool won't make you think' backlash essay — 478 hn points at peak hype.communitysrc-tired-notetaking
128. 2021-07-30notes on a year using roam researchplatformer · casey newtonthe believer's first-year review: paid the $500, praised links and daily notes, flagged the insight gap — the mixed verdict the later postmortem fulfilled.reportingsrc-newton-year-one
129. 2023-08-25why note-taking apps don't make us smarterthe verge · david piercethe verge's same-titled counterpart two days after newton's: roam 'a breakthrough' in 2021, development slowed, enthusiasm moved to obsidian and mem.reportingsrc-verge-pierce
130. 2025-06-28i deleted my second brainjoanwestenberg.com · joan westenbergthe highest-traction anti-pkm essay of the late era — 598 hn points — the roam-era habit explicitly renounced.communitysrc-westenberg-deleted
131. 2022-10-01notes against note-taking systemssubstack · sasha chapin'notes against note-taking systems' — 311 hn points: the peak systems-don't-think essay of the backlash era.communitysrc-chapin-notes-against
132. 2021-03roam sex edzsolt.blog · zsolt vicziánthe community's own security warning: cloud notes, identity risk, backups, data ownership — written by a roam insider.communitysrc-roam-sex-ed
133. 2021ghsa-q4ch-vxxv-mx3h — firebase storage exposuregithub (roam-research advisory)the official advisory: firebase storage rules once allowed listing, downloading, and deleting uploaded files across graphs — patched to granular rules.primarysrc-ghsa-firebase
134. 2020-05issue #102 — daily notes page lostgithub (roam-research/issues)the official tracker's data-loss record: missing daily notes, stuck 'saving' indicators, may 2020.primarysrc-gh-issue-102
135. 2020-12issue #451 — export loses block referencesgithub (roam-research/issues)export fidelity on the record: block-level references not preserved; the edn restore path added in response.primarysrc-gh-issue-451
136. 2022-10-13obsidian 1.0obsidianthe market's verdict: obsidian 1.0 took 1,329 hn points and 566 comments — larger than any roam thread ever.primarysrc-obsidian-1
137. 2021-03-02launch hn: athenshacker newsthe open-source 'roam killer' launch — 340 points — and, three years later, the same product unmaintained: cloning the graph was never the hard part.communitysrc-hn-athens
138. 2023-01athens no longer actively maintainedhacker newsathens no longer actively maintained — decline hit the whole wave, not just the original.communitysrc-athens-dead
139. 2022-05-05this open-source tool is helping rethink knowledge managementtechcrunch · kyle wiggerstechcrunch frames logseq as the open-source heir — used at google, meta, mit — reporting users 'jumping ship from roam.'reportingsrc-logseq-tc
140. 2025-02-03tana snaps up $25m with its ai-powered knowledge graphtechcrunchtana's $25m and a 160k waitlist — the demand roam created, monetized by a successor.reportingsrc-tana-25m
141. 2025-05-18the fall of roam (2022) reposthacker newsthe fall-of-roam repost cycle plus the privacy exchange: a commenter claims an employee name in his graph's access logs; roam's engineer and co-founder josh brown respond — strict no-access policy since 2021, e2e graphs since january 2022.communitysrc-hn-fall-repost
142. 2022-01e2e-encryption for roam researchgoedel.io · alexander rinkthe community-built e2e pressure: media urls and firebase exposure documented, then roam shipped native encrypted graphs.communitysrc-rink-e2e
143. 2021-08-26my migration from roam researchobsidian foruma representative migration document: native ios, performance, local files, interoperability.communitysrc-obsidian-forum-migration
144. 2021-08recovering lost roam notesjeffchen.dev · jeff chenthe readwise integration that deleted daily notes — and the snapshot-recovery writeup that documented it.communitysrc-jeffchen-recovery
145. 2023-01-29roam, twenty years before roamborretti.me · fernando borrettithe historical-perspective piece: nothing in roam was new — which cuts both ways.communitysrc-borretti
146. 2023-05-22what happened to roam research?canion.blog · steve canionthe named 'what happened' postmortem: did obsidian simply take the market?communitysrc-canion
147. 2020effortless output in roameffortlessoutput.com · nat eliasonthe biggest commercial artifact the hype produced: effortless output in roam — 4,400+ students self-reported, a course business built on one essay.communitysrc-effortless-output
148. 2020-05-19computer assisted intuitioncapiche'computer assisted intuition: how roam fulfills the web's original dream' — the memex/xanadu lineage in the mainstream community press.communitysrc-capiche
149. 2020-04-17roam's impressive start and how to find its next phase of growthyeti distro · alfred luathe $99 early-access period and waitlist-friction-as-distribution documented by an analyst at the time.communitysrc-yeti-distro
150. 2021-07customers grow business: roam's cult-of-personality flywheelstrategy in processthe analyst read of the believer/customer-investor model as a cult-of-personality flywheel.communitysrc-strategy-flywheel
151. 2021why i switched: a deep dive into roam vs. obsidianmedium · niles wyler'the cult mentality became jarring' — the honest record of the vibe shift from inside a migration.communitysrc-wyler-switch
152. ~2025how roam hacked upfront ltv for saasstartupspellsthe growth-analyst retrospective on upfront ltv and the believer plan — includes a secondary, unverified claim that nat eliason deleted tweets and left roam while still selling the course.communitysrc-startupspells
153. ~2025roam research reviewtryorbyethe billing-complaint record: 31-day trial auto-converting to ~$180 annual, refused refunds — small sample, persistent pattern.communitysrc-tryorbye
154. 2026roam research review 2026the sunrise digestthe late-era review: 'changed the category then stopped changing' — ~100k-block slowdowns, export loses refs and queries.communitysrc-sunrise-review
155. 2020visakanv's public roam graphvisakanv.com · visakan veerasamythe canonical public-brain artifact: a roam graph as a personal site — the collaboration model conor cited in interviews.communitysrc-visakanv
156. 2026roam research company pagelinkedinthe company page's own numbers: ~10 employees now, $10.6m total funding, five countries.reportingsrc-linkedin-roam
157. 2020-12the hiring and culture threadthreadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe unusual hiring thread: paid take-homes, a no-negotiation policy — praised and mocked in equal measure.archivesrc-hiring-culture-thread
158. 2021–2022letters from a roamanroam.elaptics.co.ukletters from a roaman — the community newsletter whose issues document rbc cohorts, the roam summit, and tana's emergence from inside.communitysrc-roaman-letters
159. 2023-02-08the 30-demos sprint with nikitonskythreadreader app · conor white-sullivanthe february 2023 shipping sprint with nikita prokopov: '30 tweet sized demos of small improvements and experiments' — the last public building-in-public burst.archivesrc-30-demos