AI Second Brain: How Recall’s Co-founder Brings Saved Content to Life

Like many of you, I have been drowning in content. Bookmarked articles I’d never read again. Podcasts I’d listened to but couldn’t remember. YouTube videos with one brilliant insight buried in three hours of footage. I had all this information saved everywhere, but none of it was actually useful.

The bigger shift is that saving content is not the same as making it useful. The daily habit is to stop treating Recall as a dumping ground and start using it as an external brain you can connect, search, chat with, and review.

I’m sharing my exact workflow, not because it’s the “right” way to use Recall, but because it might spark ideas for your own system. These are the habits that have actually stuck, the use cases that save me hours every week, and the features I genuinely can’t live without.

In Recall, tags are how your knowledge base stays organized as it grows. When you save something, Recall’s AI suggests tags automatically so you don’t have to file everything by hand. That helps a lot, but the tags are only as useful as the structure behind them. A little curation on your side makes search, chat, and connections work much better, and it gives the AI clearer signals about how your library fits together.

I’m now at a point where I’m pretty happy with my AI-generated tags, but it took me some time to get there and they’re not always right (something we are working on!). So I always do some housekeeping:

• Clean up tags that don’t fit or are too vague.
• Drag related tags under parent tags so topics stay grouped.
• Remove duplicates so the same idea isn’t split across two labels.

It only takes a few minutes, and it keeps a growing library from turning into noise. For more on how tagging works, see Tagging in Recall.

Saving articles, podcasts, and videos is a strong start, but the biggest jump in usefulness comes when you add your own content too. Your journals, plans, and notes are what turn a generic AI answer into something specific to you. Without them, chat can only reflect what you’ve saved from elsewhere. With them, it can reason across your full context.

Recall is also a rich note-taker. Click the pen icon (✎) next to Add Content to create a blank note, hit /, and you get a full block-style editor: headings, lists, to-dos, callouts, and more. That’s where I capture journals, nutrition plans, and anything else I want the AI to know about me. See Note-taking in Recall for the full picture.

In chat, @ mention the notes or tags that matter. My favorite conversations are when I reference my personal journals or nutrition plans alongside saved research. For example, I’ll ask “create a longevity protocol” and reference both my health research tags AND my nutritionist’s personalized PDF. Because the answer is grounded in both, I get something tailored to me instead of generic advice from the internet.

Your attention is finite. A 2-hour podcast, a long YouTube video, or a dense PDF can easily cost an evening, and not every recommendation deserves that. Pre-screening is how I spend my time with intention: I decide what’s worth my full attention before I commit, not after I’ve already sunk an hour into the wrong thing. This has saved me countless “wrong podcast on a run” moments.

When I come across long-form content:

1. Save or open it in Recall with the browser extension, by pasting a link, or from your library.
2. Read the summary first in the Reader or Notebook. Skim the key points without watching or reading the whole thing.
3. Chat with the content and ask whether it’s worth your time. For example: Is this relevant to what I’m trying to learn? What’s the one idea I’d take away? Is there a better source on this topic already in my knowledge base?
4. Decide before you commit. If it’s worth it, go deep: take notes, highlight, and save it properly. If not, move on without guilt.

The goal isn’t to consume everything. It’s to protect your time for what actually matters.

A second brain isn’t only for research. Lighter personal interests belong in the same library too. My movie watchlist lives alongside health notes and podcasts, so recommendations don’t disappear into a notes app I’ll never reopen.

Recall is also great for recommending movies. Once you’ve saved films with your ratings and notes on who you’d recommend them to, open global chat from the AI icon in the left panel and ask things like “What’s a good thriller for a rainy night?” or “What have I saved that my partner would like?” Instead of scrolling streaming apps, you get picks grounded in what you’ve already curated.

Here’s how I use Recall for films:

1. Save a movie from Wikipedia with Wiki Search in the app, or add a recommendation on mobile when a friend mentions something good.
2. Tag it with status labels like Movies/To Watch or Movies/Watched, plus genre or theme tags if you want to filter later.
3. Add a short note after you’ve seen it: your rating, who you’d recommend it to, and anything worth remembering.
4. Ask for a recommendation in chat when you need one, or explore connections to spot patterns across directors and themes.

It’s the same habit as serious research, just applied to everyday life. For a full walkthrough, see Movie Tracker and Watchlist.

Journals are where my second brain gets personal. Saving content tells you what you’ve consumed; journaling captures what you actually think about it. Over time those entries become something you can reflect on, not just reread.

The real value comes when you chat with your own notes in global chat (click the AI icon in the left panel). Patterns that are hard to spot across months of writing surface quickly when you ask Recall directly: “What themes keep coming up in my journals?”, “How has my thinking on work changed since January?”, or “What am I avoiding?” Because Recall answers from your knowledge first, the response is grounded in what you wrote, not generic advice.

You can also combine journals with saved content in the same conversation. Reference a journal tag alongside research you’ve saved: “Based on these themes, how can I adjust my routine using what I’ve saved in @Health?” That’s where journaling stops being a diary and starts compounding with everything else in your library.

Here’s how I use Recall for journaling:

1. Write a note with the pen icon. I use dated titles and nested tags like Journals/2025/March so entries stay findable.
2. Capture what’s on your mind in the Notebook. Hit / for headings, lists, and callouts if you want more structure.
3. Let Recall connect it to related notes and saved content automatically, or link people, places, and concepts by hand with [[ or the connections icon.
4. Reflect in chat when you want perspective: ask about recurring themes, how your thinking has shifted, or what you keep coming back to.
5. Combine with saved research by @ mentioning journal tags and topic tags together, so the answer draws on both your writing and your sources.

For a full walkthrough, see AI Notes.

Recipes are another place where a connected library really pays off. Family dishes, blog saves, and cooking videos all live in the same searchable box, with your modifications and notes attached.

Recall is also great for recommending recipes, but only once you’ve built a library worth recommending from. The more you save with your own tweaks, sides, and tags, the better the suggestions get.

Here’s how I build and use my recipe box:

1. Save a recipe from a blog, Instagram, YouTube, or a family note with the browser extension, a pasted link, or the mobile share sheet.
2. Clean it up in chat if needed, then add your modifications and sides in the Notebook.
3. Tag it by cuisine, meal type, or diet so you can filter fast.

When it’s time to cook, I don’t start from scratch on Google:

1. Open global chat in the left panel by clicking the AI icon, then @ mention your recipes tag, or search across your whole library.
2. Ask for a recommendation based on what you actually have saved. For example: “What can I make with cinnamon?”, “What’s a quick vegetarian dinner?”, or “Which of my saved desserts would work for a dinner party?”
3. Add constraints if you need to: ingredients you have on hand, dietary preferences, or how much time you have.
4. Pick from the answer and open the card. Because each recipe holds your tweaks and suggested sides, the recommendation is practical, not a generic list from the internet.
5. Share a Recall link when someone asks for the recipe. They get the dish and your notes on what to change or serve alongside it.

The small personal details are often what make a saved recipe useful later. For a full walkthrough, see Recipe Organizer.

Saving content in isolation is only half the picture. Connections are how ideas compound: when the same concept shows up across a podcast, an article, and your own notes, Recall links them so you can see the thread. The Graph overview is where this becomes visible, a map of how everything in your library relates.

Don’t just save content:

1. Highlight key concepts as you read or listen, then click the connections icon, or type [[ to link to another card.
2. Unlink irrelevant ones (like a city name mentioned in passing in a movie) so your graph stays clean and useful.
3. Turn on Augmented Browsing in the extension so past connections resurface while you browse new content.

Now when I’m reading about neurotransmitters, I see everywhere I’ve encountered that concept before. Augmented browsing turns old research into live context, so your past notes and saved content resurface when they’re relevant.

Even though I’ve been off socials for a while, I still get an itch to do something on my phone. Instead of opening another feed, I try to use that time productively. Recall Review turns idle minutes into active recall on content I’ve already decided is worth keeping.

Here’s the loop:

1. Generate questions from anything you’ve saved: open a card and click Generate Questions, or build a quiz across a tag or your whole knowledge base.
2. Add them to your review queue so they come back on a spaced repetition schedule, more often on what you’re struggling with, less on what you’ve nailed.
3. Before bed, open the app and run through a few questions on content you’ve saved that week. It takes minutes and actually strengthens memory instead of adding more to consume.

This is the habit that replaces passive scrolling with retention. You’re not just collecting more content; you’re making what you’ve already saved stick. For question types, challenges, and how the review schedule works, see Recall Quiz 2.0 and spaced repetition.