Eden Is NOT a Second Brain App

(And Why That Changes Everything)

Watch the video version here:

Eden is not a second brain app, and this is something extremely important to understand.

It also has enormous implications for the systems and content I’ll be creating with Noah’s Ark going forward.

So I felt it was really important to share this with you with full transparency and clarity.

What I mean is that Eden today is not a second brain app, and it’s not meant to be one.

Dan and the team explained this very well in a podcast they did, about an hour long, where they talk about “Kortex: The $3 Million Mistake.”

Great clickbait title.

But what they were saying is that Kortex’s problem was that it was a second brain app for writers, but they didn’t really have a differentiating edge. T

hey didn’t have truly unique, durable value propositions that would allow them to survive long-term.

At the time, they were essentially a mix of Notion and Obsidian.

It was cool for writers, for people in Dan’s community, for people like me who were already familiar with this kind of tool.

What was nice was they included the ability to have all AI models in one place and reference your notes within AI chats.

That was a cool feature, but in reality, it’s not differentiating at all because it’s very easy to implement.

With projects and everything LLMs are developing today, it could be replicated fairly easily.

So beyond the technical mistakes they made, which I won’t go into again since I’ve covered them in previous content, Eden’s vision has completely shifted.

Their objective now is to create what they describe as a search engine for your memories.

The idea is you can save and store everything in Eden, like you would with Google Drive or Dropbox. Photos, videos, texts, notes, but also links to content you find on the internet like articles, YouTube videos, and so on.

Everything stored in one workspace, with the ability to work solo or in teams.

That team aspect is important.

And finally, using all of this to fuel your entire creator business.

It’s no longer just for writers like Kortex was.

It’s also for design teams, video editors, agencies, and more.

This is completely different from Kortex’s original purpose as a writing app, a second brain app, a knowledge management app.

We’re no longer in that territory.

We’re now in what I’d call a content orchestration application.

So what is content orchestration exactly?

It’s the ability to manage multiple types of content with different formats in one place, group them together, and then surface them quickly through Eden’s search features.

And also to use them to feed AI chats, like you can do with the Canvas features or the AI chats that were in Kortex and are now in Eden.

Where Kortex was a mix of Notion and Obsidian, Eden is now a mix of MyMind and Poppy.ai.

If you’re not familiar with these two tools:

MyMind is an application designed to help you capture anything on the web and organize it with automatic AI tags so you can find things easily.

It’s really a place to store and capture content.

Poppy.ai is an application that lets you work on a canvas and connect links you capture, like Instagram reels or YouTube videos, automatically transcribe them, and then link them to AI chats to create content.

Most importantly, it lets you have AI chats fed with context you’ve chosen yourself, because one of the big challenges with LLMs today is controlling the context to get better results.

Eden is clearly a blend of these two applications.

When you look at them separately, you can see Eden is really these two merged together.

There’s nothing wrong with that. The connection makes a lot of sense.

But as I said, this completely changes the dynamic.

Eden is not a second brain app.

It’s not a knowledge management app.

It’s a content orchestration app.

That means it serves different needs, different objectives, and a different vision.

And yes, because Eden has the same features as Kortex, you can still apply the same systems and processes I’ve taught through my courses and YouTube videos to create a second brain in Eden.

That’s totally possible.

But the truth is the application isn’t designed for that.

When I started creating all these systems, I did so because Kortex was just beginning and the vision at the time was to develop this second brain aspect.

In my head, I thought they were going to build a Graph View, develop more and more features that would help us build a second brain, and make systems like Zettelkasten even better.

As we’ve just seen, that’s no longer the case.

It’s changed. It’s no longer the team’s vision.

And that’s totally ok.

But it means that as a systems creator who shares this with my audience, I’m obligated with full transparency to say that today, a major overhaul of my vision and systems is needed.

Even though Eden is great and I’ll continue creating content about it, and it has enormous utility for creators...

For those who are solely interested in knowledge management, learning, and developing a second brain with the Zettelkasten method ?

I can no longer tell you with integrity that Eden is a better application than Obsidian for building your second brain.

Here’s why:

Obsidian is the ultimate second brain application.

It’s free. It’s stored locally.

It uses universal Markdown format that’s easily exportable.

And it’s extremely customizable with plugins.

I’ve started seeing people say they didn’t make the transition to Eden and went back to Obsidian because they didn’t like the new direction.

That’s totally fine. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Eden has simply evolved into an application that isn’t a second brain app, and therefore second brain systems like Zettelkasten aren’t really suited for Eden anymore in my opinion.

Eden will always lack a Graph View.

I don’t think the team will implement one because it wouldn’t really make sense given their objectives and the type of features they want to develop.

So we’ll probably never have a Graph View in Eden.

As I’ve already explained in my video about the differences, not having a Graph View is a real drawback when developing a Zettelkasten system.

It’s what allows us to develop an ecosystem of interconnected knowledge and encourages us to make links between documents.

Then there’s the fact that Eden’s documents don’t seem to be true Markdown anymore.

From a long-term intellectual sovereignty perspective, if you develop a second brain on Eden with all your notes and one day want to export it or change software, that’s a problem.

With Kortex, it was Markdown, so you could always export your workspace and move it to Obsidian.

With Eden today, I don’t think that’s really the case anymore.

Intellectual sovereignty doesn’t seem to be the team’s vision.

With integrity and transparency:

If you want to create a second brain where you’ll store all your knowledge and notes, where you can apply the Zettelkasten method to develop an intellectual empire and a galaxy of knowledge that belongs to you...

And you do it on software that could disappear in the coming years or change direction?

You risk creating a massive system and investing enormous resources into something that may not be durable long-term.

For that reason, Obsidian remains the best application for intellectual sovereignty.

Now, despite all this, Eden still remains an excellent application for content orchestration.

We’re talking about capturing content you find on the internet, saving it, then reworking and reusing it by feeding it to AI chats and using the Canvas feature.

That’s extremely relevant and practical.

For creators, I think Eden will be extremely useful for building systems that help with content creation.

But if you follow me because you love the idea of creating a Zettelkasten system, I can no longer honestly tell you to do it on Eden instead of Obsidian.

I think Obsidian is better for that today.

That’s why I’m actually going to start creating notes in Obsidian again.

I think I’ll begin producing content on both Eden for content orchestration systems and Obsidian for second brain systems.

This means I’ll need to do a massive update of all the resources I’ve created in my previous courses.

Obviously that’s planned, but I won’t have time to finish everything in December, but throughout 2026 I really want to refresh Noah’s Ark’s entire ecosystem of content and systems to create a coherent learning experience that makes sense, aligns with your objectives and vision, and delivers maximum value.

So here’s the conclusion:

Eden is a content orchestration app, not a second brain anymore.

It does new things. And it does these new things very well.

But for second brain applications, I don’t think it’s really the best app to develop those systems today.

That’s why I recommend you use both tools:

• Obsidian for your Zettelkasten system (if you need one)

• Eden for Content Orchestration.

I invite you to step back and reflect on your objectives with Eden and with the applications you use to organize your knowledge.

If your only goal is to capture whatever you want...

If you don’t care about applying the Zettelkasten method because it’s long and time-consuming...

If all you want is to easily capture notes and internet content to put into AI chats, play around with them, do research and create content...

Then Eden is the best application for you.

No doubt about it.

Much better than Obsidian, which will be more technical and complicated to set up since you have to create your own system because it’s an app where you can do whatever you want.

Eden does what it does very well.

But if you really want that more manual approach to knowledge acquisition with a custom Zettelkasten system ?

If you want to create your own notes, connect them, see the connections between notes to truly deepen your learning, and generate unique perspectives as a creator and individual on topics that interest you?

Then Obsidian remains the best option for developing a custom Zettelkasten and a second brain in that sense.

It’s important for me to tell you this and be authentic and transparent with you.

As I said, this means I’ll need to rework all my resources.

That’s something that will happen and I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

But this is really something I invite you to think about for yourself and for the systems you want to implement in 2026.

I’m currently working on an ultimate guide to generate and create a second brain.

It’s going to be a written guide, a new product format I’m testing.

But this time, I’m going to make it evergreen, meaning I’ll simply share fundamental principles and system steps, and then you’ll have the choice to apply this system on Obsidian or Eden based on your objectives and what’s important to you.

So that’s everything for this email.

It was important for me to make this clarification with you, because I want you to use the tool that makes the most sense depending on your goals...

And because I always want to be transparent and authentic with you guys.

Anyway, thank you for reading...

And welcome back to the Ark.

Noah.