The catch with self-hosted PKM is never the capture part. Notes apps are a solved problem. The hard bits are retrieval and the "will my data survive" test. A folder of markdown files wins on longevity because it is just text, but loses on retrieval the moment you have more than a few hundred notes and no index.
The middle ground that has worked for me is keeping everything as plain files and using a separate indexer on top, so the notes themselves stay portable and the search tool can be swapped. That way the second brain does not become a hostage to whichever app or database format you happened to start with.
Sovereignty matters most on the boring axis: export paths, backup, and how ugly it is to leave. Fancy capture UIs come and go.
The catch with self-hosted PKM is never the capture part. Notes apps are a solved problem. The hard bits are retrieval and the "will my data survive" test. A folder of markdown files wins on longevity because it is just text, but loses on retrieval the moment you have more than a few hundred notes and no index.
The middle ground that has worked for me is keeping everything as plain files and using a separate indexer on top, so the notes themselves stay portable and the search tool can be swapped. That way the second brain does not become a hostage to whichever app or database format you happened to start with.
Sovereignty matters most on the boring axis: export paths, backup, and how ugly it is to leave. Fancy capture UIs come and go.