Quick answer
Capacities organises notes as typed objects (people, books, meetings, projects) with properties and relations, adds AI chat grounded in your notes, and files quick captures automatically; free tier, Pro from $9.99 a month. Tana uses supertags to turn any node into a structured object, with live queries, AI fields that fill themselves, and voice capture; it is more powerful and takes longer to learn. Writers and researchers who want calm lean Capacities; systems-builders lean Tana.
Notion made databases mainstream; Obsidian made links mainstream. Capacities and Tana take the next step: everything is an object with a type, and the AI knows what type it is looking at. That makes both better at answering questions about your own knowledge than a pile of documents.
Capacities: objects, calmly
You define object types once (a Person has a role and a company; a Book has an author and a rating), and every note becomes an instance. Daily notes, a calendar, whiteboards, and media embeds sit around that core. The AI chats across your whole space, summarises, and can file a quick capture into the right object. It is opinionated and pleasant, which is the point: less configuration, more writing.
Tana: supertags and queries
In Tana any bullet can carry a supertag that gives it fields, and any field can be an AI field that fills itself from the node's content. Live search nodes act as queries that update as you add data. Voice memos become structured notes. Tana is what people build CRMs and research systems in, and it rewards people who enjoy building systems. It punishes people who do not; the learning curve is real.
Practical differences
- Learning curve: Capacities is usable in an hour; Tana takes days to feel natural
- Power: Tana's queries and AI fields go further than anything in Capacities
- Offline: both are limited; neither is a full offline-first app like Obsidian
- Price: both have free tiers; Tana's paid tiers are pricier and gate AI credits
Related reading
Bottom line
Capacities if you want structure without building it. Tana if building the structure is half the fun and you need live queries. Both will make your AI questions about your own notes far more useful than a folder of documents.
