Anyone using Tana

https://tana.inc

Looks like outliner + todo + graph + dark mode

Not sure what's new

Mentioned here, by the way:

https://www.outlinersoftware.com/topics/viewt/9874/0/two-new-crispy-crimp-flavours

I have signed up for the wait list. I am intrigued, of course. I'm not sure how long the wait will be.

Steve

Thanks for sharing, it's intriguing, looking forward to finding out more about how it works and what it can do.

This rather rambling video provides a look at how Tana works. It makes me even more eager to get my finger tips on it.

Steve

Nice detailed explainatory videos, should you wish to dig in a little.

https://www.cortexfutura.com/c/tana/

Better link

https://www.cortexfutura.com/tana-fundamentals/

$Bill wrote:

Nice detailed explainatory videos, should you wish to dig in a little.

https://www.cortexfutura.com/c/tana/

It has feature inheritance and prototypes (renamed as "super tag").

Tinderbox used to be the sole note taking app with prototypes and inheritances (so far as I can tell). Who know when the Agent/action feature of Tinderbox is going to get implemented (copied over).

The implementation is in Tana is much more attractive; that regular users can easily get it go.

From the looks of it, it appears that Tana will be joining the tiny, elite club of modern, "one-pane" outliners with full support for columns/fields. Aside from task-centric options that can be repurposed for general outlining (Smartsheet, Clickup, SheetPlanner, etc), my current go-to options for outlining with columns are InfoQube (on Windows, where I currently work) and Tinderbox and OmniOutliner (on Mac). Having a columns-capable, web-based app would certainly fill a niche, although, of course, there are big advantages to offline-first as well.

I hope this trend continues. And if it does, I think there would also be room for an improved OPML-like format (or a "hierarchical CSV"-like format) that would allow for straightforward interchange of outlines-with-columns.

(Over on the Slack channel, Tana's developers appear to be periodically giving out invites...)

Here is a recent Youtube video by a user explaining how you bring in data and how tagging works in Tana:

https://youtu.be/3Jhr_xDPKvI

Any more thoughts on Tana?

There appears to be a bit of a learning curve involved (it looks like I'll need to watch a few hours of videos to understand and appreciate some features, so I'm just wondering if it's worth sinking time into it).

I'm both a Roam and WorkFlowy user, which seem to be the two main competitors they are targeting (judging from the imports they've set up).

It's like there is quite a serious and big team behind Tana, it looks like a major effort, seems much bigger than Roam or WorkFlowy when they started out (?):

https://tana.inc/company

I thought these sort of services were quite niche, even within the world of productivity software, so it's curious to see the amount of effort put into this, it looks like they are anticipating a big market for this?

Anyone who has used Tinderbox will feel right at home. And similar to Tinderbox, it does have a learning curve.

So far for me the most intriguing feature is its embrace of a "Supertag" feature that is very analogous to Tinderbox's attributes. If you create a tag for #book, you can designates it as a Supertag and populate it with field you define: author, to read/have read, genre, topic, rating, etc. I used Tinderbox for a few years and never came close to really grasping its power -- I was happy when I could generate a list of things like books I've read on a particular topic. I don't think Tana doesn't have anywhere near the power of Tinderbox as of now, but with a little effort and some of the videos I'm finding it much easier to work with than TB was for me. The easy import options are currently limited to Roam and Workflowy as you noted (with some additional options available through "Tana Intermediate Format" in Github), so that may limit some folks. And like all program, Tana has its quirks. But I am enjoying trying it out -- it's an appealing sinkhole of time just like Tinderbox!

I used Tana for a few days. I certainly didn't delve into all its rich features, but through my experience I would agree with what @exatty95 said. And I would add this:

I found that Tana is a lot like Notion... not in its user interface, but in the fact that to get anything out of it, you need to spend time setting it up to meet your needs. That primarily involves the supertags. That's why I've shied away from Tana. I just don't want to spend that much time fidgeting with my "setup." As an aside, I get a kick out of the Notion subReddit, where there are so many contributors writing things like, "I finally got my [name of project] page where I want it." Don't get me wrong, I can understand the joy of getting these tools to work perfectly for you, but I've learned that is a rabbit hole for me.

But Tana does have some other cool features. For instance, it is simple to flip an uncompleted task from today to some other day. So I believe Tana is very thoughtfully designed.

I hope this is useful.

Steve



Dr Andus wrote:

Any more thoughts on Tana?

There appears to be a bit of a learning curve involved (it looks like
I'll need to watch a few hours of videos to understand and appreciate
some features, so I'm just wondering if it's worth sinking time into
it).

I'm both a Roam and WorkFlowy user, which seem to be the two main
competitors they are targeting (judging from the imports they've set
up).

It's like there is quite a serious and big team behind Tana, it looks
like a major effort, seems much bigger than Roam or WorkFlowy when they
started out (?):

https://tana.inc/company

I thought these sort of services were quite niche, even within the world
of productivity software, so it's curious to see the amount of effort
put into this, it looks like they are anticipating a big market for
this?

I've had access to Tana since a few weeks after I posted the question at the head of this thread. I operate it almost every day for a hour or so -- I hesitate to say I "use" it, because I'm not sure I know yet what use case of mine it would be a good fit for.

Overall, I think Tana is a fascinatingly precise instrument. Very carefully constructed. It's a graph database. Everything is a node. Every node can be tagged. Every tag (which are also nodes) can have as many attributes as you wish, and tag attributes can be other tags with their own attributes, or fields with their own attributes. Nodes can also have notes (other nodes) and embedded searches.

It's easy to spin out of control with these complex semantic links embedded into one another. It's recommended to keep some notes on the side diagramming the structures you build in Tana so you don't lose track of what you're doing.

There are a lot of videos (of course) from users claiming to explain the secrets of using Tana productively. I think Maggie Appleton's is the best of these, so far.

Comparisons to Tinderbox are fair, but not entirely accurate. Tinderbox is not a graph database -- at least not in the modern technical sense. Over the last 20 or so years Tinderbox has accreted hundreds of features that seemed interesting to the author, without a strict guiding architecture. I suspect that Tana's engineers are not much interested in bolting on idiosyncratic features -- they proceed very slowly and carefully to tweak the Tana engine. Of course, since Tana is web-based and everyone's instance is hooked into the Tana core, it's a virtue to be careful.

Tana is opening up to more users these days -- all current users were given the right to pass out an invitation to another person, recntly. I recommend experimenting with it.

Be sure to browse the Tana Slack channels

https://app.slack.com/client/T02E0729D6U/C048S52GH1Q


And add the "Tana Pattern Library" to your sidebar in Tana for some useful field and supertag patterns for various use cases.

https://app.tana.inc?nodeid=prMg0WbQMi

Always worth bearing in mind that Numbers does one-pane outlining (with columns) pretty well too ;-)

Lucas wrote:

From the looks of it, it appears that Tana will be joining the tiny,
elite club of modern, "one-pane" outliners with full support for
columns/fields. Aside from task-centric options that can be repurposed
for general outlining (Smartsheet, Clickup, SheetPlanner, etc), my
current go-to options for outlining with columns are InfoQube (on
Windows, where I currently work) and Tinderbox and OmniOutliner (on
Mac). Having a columns-capable, web-based app would certainly fill a
niche, although, of course, there are big advantages to offline-first as
well.

I hope this trend continues. And if it does, I think there would also be
room for an improved OPML-like format (or a "hierarchical CSV"-like
format) that would allow for straightforward interchange of
outlines-with-columns.

(Over on the Slack channel, Tana's developers appear to be periodically
giving out invites...)

Thanks for your thoughts, exatty95, Steve, and Paul.

It sounds like it would be worth spending a bit more time with Tana to figure it out then.

I'm having a similar feeling about it like I had when I first encountered Roam.

I didn't quite get it initially, but there was something intriguing about it, and in the end it became my most important tool.

Encountering Tana is a bit like "well, here's a piece of paper -- now what?"

I've watched a few videos, and most of them are evangelistic, which doesn't help. This particular video, however, is calm and friendly, not trying to sell courses, and practical.

From Mark McElroy:

https://youtu.be/K_m7YVqIgXo

Very interesting. I don't see how supertags and metadata work, but it looks very flexible. I can also see how it reminds one of Tinderbox.

Since Tana is SaaS (Software as a Service), I doubt I will be a user.

On a side note, the reviewer shows notes about the odd conspiracy centered on the questionable theory the earth is flat.

If anyone is interested, I checked. Earth isn't flat. It's a fun rabbit hole, though. Take what a flat earther says and use it as a study prompt. For instance, I didn't realize that gyrocompasses self lock on true north due to the earth being a rotating sphere. It's real, the rotation of the earth pushes the gyro to true north, not magnetism or human input.

I know. I need to get out more.

Tana looks interesting, except for the SaaS part.


Paul Korm wrote:

Encountering Tana is a bit like "well, here's a piece of paper -- now
what?"

I've watched a few videos, and most of them are evangelistic, which
doesn't help. This particular video, however, is calm and friendly,
not trying to sell courses, and practical.

From Mark McElroy:

https://youtu.be/K_m7YVqIgXo

Amontillado wrote:

On a side note, the reviewer shows notes about the odd conspiracy
centered on the questionable theory the earth is flat.

Actually that example was the most informative for me, as it showed how Tana could be used for reading notes and pulling them together for a short summary of a book, which looked particularly useful.

I wonder if there are any criteria for early access. I signed up when I first saw this topic last year and filled out the form, but I never heard back with a way to join the beta.

FWIW, one aspect of Tana that appeals to me is how insights into, and evolution of, my supertags/attributes emerge from continued work with the program. The abundant tags and backlinks that I use in other programs provide helpful but rough tools for ferreting out information and connections, and Tana's Fields make it far easier to fine-tune my searches and find the information and relationships I really want in any given situation. This is similar to how I remember Tinderbox, although I'm finding it far easier to get it right -- or right-enough -- in Tana than I ever did in Tinderbox. It's still very early in Tana's development, and features I'd want aren't yet in place (such as the ability to list tasks due "today" for whichever date it is), but I like the ways things are heading. I'd recommend joining the Slack community for Tana, as the developers are responsive and other users are very helpful.