Setting up AI Agents in Obsidian Dear Reader, Yesterday I showed you a video demonstrating how powerful AI agents are when you set them up well (click here if you missed it) and give them (restricted) access to your notes and papers. Today, let’s talk about exactly how this system is built. It has five components. Implementing them correctly is like making a wheel round, absolutely essential for its frictionless function. Let me explain in this video from the new AI Agents for Academics...
2 days ago • 5 min read
New Release: Academic AI Agents Course + Intro Bonus Dear Reader, Yesterday. I shared with you how my PhD defence ended up being a stress test for my note-taking system and the AI agents that run on top of it. (Click here if you missed it) But what are AI agents, and how exactly can they help in your academic work? To explain it in one analogy: An AI chat in the browser is to an AI agent what a calculator is to a computer. They are technically very similar, but while a calculator performs a...
3 days ago • 5 min read
The Stressful Story of my PhD Defence Dear Reader, Just about 2 weeks ago, I received my PhD examination reports. Some 30 pages of critique, just 6 days before the defense. Students often have weeks or months to prepare — my uni gave me six days. On top of that, I hadn’t touched my research in way over 4 months (turned in March, and my son was born in early May). While one examiner wrote an extremely positive letter, another made numerous smaller suggestions and questions. And then there is...
4 days ago • 3 min read
Best Zotero Plugins for 2026 Dear Reader, Today's newsletter is dedicated to Zotero Plugins. Most academics have heard of Zotero or are using it actively. It's free and connects to almost any service out there. I personally use it more as a bridge to import/export papers. But if you have a large collection of Zotero papers, you can benefit a lot from its myriad of plugins for AI integration, automation, improved notes and many more. The top Plugins are: ZotMoov, Beaver, Notero, Better Notes,...
17 days ago • 1 min read
Using Kindle/eBook highlights in Obsidian Dear Reader, Do you use e-books rather than PDFs in your academic or personal work? I do, and if I don't take notes, the memory of books lasts only about 6 months. That's a waste! A better way I developed over the last couple of years, is to import the book highlights into Obsidian. But stored highlights are just information. To go from information → knowledge, you need to connect the passages from the book with your own thinking. To help with this, I...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
My First YouTube Video: PhD Story & System Dear Reader,Last week I recorded, animated and edited my first real YouTube video, which sums up everything you need to know to start using Obsidian efficiently for your research. Part 1: Obsidian for Academics in 15 minutes Part 2: Organising Ideas using the Source Topic Argument System Part 3: A live demo of how it works, which was the highlight of the last information management course. Despite my best efforts, it turned out to be 55 minutes long!...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Connecting Zotero and Claude Dear Reader,After talking to many of my colleagues, I realised that for most academics, AI is near synonymous with using ChatGPT in the browser. But in the last 6-12 months (since Claude Code and Codex were released), things have dramatically changed, to the point where I feel that using ChatGPT wouldn't even cover 10% of what I do with AI today (See the second block in this email, if you're intrigued). This all started a few months ago, when the co-founder of...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Building Complex Research Diagrams with AI Dear Reader,Having read so much content on AI and followed the news closely, I sense a shift in the collective enthusiasm for AI's transformative potential. From one angle, we start realising that the claims of AI's practical usefulness are overblown. An MIT study found that: Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return. From another angle,...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
SciSpace (Sponsor) New in SciSpace: Verified Reports to check your references AI tools invent references, and one fake source can sink a paper. SciSpace Verified Reports checks every claim, removes hallucinated citations, and lets you open each source inline — free. A feature researchers shouldn't miss out on.» Run your first verified report (free) Discount Codes:JNEFF40 (40% off annual)JNEFF20 (20% off monthly) Connecting Zotero and Claude Dear Reader,What did people in the late 17th century...
about 2 months ago • 2 min read
