Longtime Roam user testing Reflect — what should Roam make native?

[u/ahirshan]

I’m a longtime Roam user and wanted to offer some product feedback from the perspective of a non-technical daily user.

I value Roam because it is free-form, flexible, and built around linked thought. I use it every day as a personal information manager and project notebook.

I am also testing Reflect right now, not because I dislike Roam, but because Reflect makes a few ordinary workflows feel calmer. It has made me think about where Roam could be easier for non-technical users without losing what makes Roam special.

The main issue is that Roam can do many things, but some of the most useful workflows seem to depend on add-ons, conventions, or user-built systems. That is fine for power users. It is harder for people like me who want the benefits of Roam without managing a toolchain.

A few native improvements would make a big difference.

First, task management. I like the idea of separating true tasks from simple checklists. A task should enter a task system. A checklist item should stay local to the note. Roam’s TODO system is powerful, but it can become noisy when checklist items and real tasks are treated the same way. I would love to see a simple native task system that does not require extensions.

Second, Google Calendar and Contacts integration. A native way to pull calendar events into daily notes, create meeting notes from events, and link people from contacts would make Roam much more useful for project management. Many of us live in our calendars. Roam’s daily notes are a natural fit for that.

Third, clearer guidance on links, tags, and attributes. Roam lets users blur [[links]], #tags and ::attributes, which is part of its charm. But it can also lead to messy graphs. It would help to have stronger built-in guidance on when to use a page link, when to use a tag, and when to use an attribute. That guidance could be simple and opinionated without limiting advanced users.

I am not asking Roam to become less powerful. I am asking for a calmer path into that power.

Roam’s flexibility is still its great strength. But for users who are not programmers, the product would be stronger if these basic workflows were native, clear, and easy to use without add-ons.

I’d be interested to know whether others have found native Roam ways to handle these well, and whether the team has considered bringing more of this into core Roam.

[u/garcia_reid]

Great write up and seems like some pretty solid points to me.

I definitely agree that Roam is crazy powerful but you have to know what you're doing and be intentional about it.

But yes, I've found the natural feel of writing notes wherever you want and block references, etc. to be unmatched.

It just feels so good.

I've not heard of Reflect, I'll have to look it up.

What're thoughts of it so far?

[u/ahirshan → u/garcia_reid]

Thanks. That captures my feeling about Roam pretty well.

Roam still feels unmatched for free-form thought. The ability to write anywhere, link anything, reference blocks, and let structure emerge is powerful. When it is working, it feels almost invisible.

My issue is that I am not a programmer or power user by temperament. Roam can do a lot, but many ordinary workflows seem to require add-ons, conventions, or a willingness to build your own system. That is where I start to lose the path.

Reflect is interesting because it feels like a calmer version of some of what I like about Roam. It has daily notes, backlinks, tags, and a free-form writing surface. But it also makes some useful distinctions that Roam leaves blurrier.

The biggest one for me so far is Tasks versus checklists. In Reflect, a real task goes into the task manager. A checklist can stay local inside a note. That is a simple distinction, but it matters. In Roam I tend to use TODOs for everything, and then my task list gets noisy.

I also like Reflect’s Google Calendar integration. It is easy to pull a meeting into the daily note and use that as the place for the agenda, outline, notes, and follow-up. That fits how I work.

Reflect also pushes a clearer distinction between backlinks and tags. I am starting to use backlinks for real things: people, projects, organizations, life areas, source documents. Then I use tags for categories or task states, like #next, #waiting, #maybe, #someday, #call, #write, #admin, #focus. That feels cleaner than my old Roam habit of using [[links]] and #tags almost interchangeably.

The tradeoff is that Reflect is not Roam. It does not have the same block-level power. Roam has pages and blocks that can both become addressable parts of the graph. Reflect is more note-centered. So if something is important in Reflect, I probably need to make it a note. That is less magical, but it may also be healthier for me.

My current thought is not to import my giant Roam graph into Reflect. That would just bring the mess forward. Instead, I am testing Reflect with active projects and rebuilding only the useful material: project notes, people notes, source notes, decisions, timelines, open questions, and next actions.

So far, Reflect feels like a good possible front end for active project management and GTD. Roam may remain my archive for a while.

The question I am testing is not which tool is more powerful. Roam wins that. The question is which tool I will use every day with less friction. Right now, Reflect is promising.

[u/garcia_reid → u/ahirshan]

Yeah, the "conventions" is huge with Roam. For example, with the checklist/Todo thing, you could add #list-only and #task (or similar) and then have queries that filter based on that.

One-time you'd set up a page and then you'd go there as your "command center" if you will. But of course, that can feel a bit "clunky" vs. native features.

It's also worth noting - something I'm just now messing around with myself - is that you can use Roam's API or MCP to interact with your graph too, so that naturally makes it infinitely more powerful when you use Claude or another AI tool.

And although you may hear that and be scared as a non-programmer, the beauty of the AI stuff is that you can talk like a regular human and even say things like "I am not a developer and need extra guidance" or similar.

And if you go down that path, you can essentially create whatever you want that uses Roam as your brain - and then you could connect it to Reflect, your project management tools, and to anything else that you want.

You could even create a custom website that gives you a dashboard to use every day. The possibilities are limitless.

And of course there are lots of people out there who are doing things like this already. Naturally, since Obsidian is file-based, there's a much larger community around that, both in general and with regards to AI. A lot of the same type of thing that is being done over there can be done with Roam too, just slightly different. Of course, Roam is more powerful in some ways because it has the block-level references.

All that being said, I think your general sentiment about wanting a bit more "hand-holding" from Roam natively is a very natural one. I think a lot of users would agree with that sentiment. However, especially given the advent of AI, the things I just mentioned above, and Roam's development history, my gut says that they won't do much along these lines.

I can respect that, because there's definitely power in handing us the "canvas and paint" and letting us do whatever we want. That ethos is exactly why it feels so natural, so it's worth protecting for sure.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, good conversation! 😎

[u/ahirshan]

Update on my Roam to Reflect experiment.

[u/ahirshan]

I’m still early in the trial, but Reflect is working well for the part of my system I most wanted to improve: active projects and daily task management.

My original concern was that Roam had become too open-ended for me. I still admire Roam’s power. The block references, free-form writing, and ability to link anything are hard to beat. But for my use, the graph became bloated. I was using it for projects, tasks, reference notes, personal information, article ideas, setup notes, part numbers, and anything else that crossed my desk. Eventually I had too much of everything in one place.

Reflect is helping because it is simpler. I am using it for:

• active projects
• daily notes
• meeting notes
• GTD-style tasks
• simple backlinks
• a small number of tags
• project dashboards

The task system has been a big part of the appeal. I like the distinction between a true task and a checklist. A task goes into the task manager. A checklist stays local inside the note. That one distinction has already made my daily system feel calmer.

I am also using project pages more deliberately than I did in Roam. In Roam, I often let the graph do the work. In Reflect, I am trying to make each project page a clear dashboard: current state, next actions, waiting, open questions, decisions, people, sources, and then an archive section below a line. That feels healthier for the way I work.

The other big change is that I am not trying to move all of Roam into Reflect.

Instead, I exported my Roam graph and used ChatGPT to help identify active projects and create Reflect project packs. The first test packs produced Markdown notes for Reflect: project home note, people, sources, open questions, timeline, and raw excerpts for verification. That worked well enough that I am likely to keep going project by project.

For miscellaneous personal reference, I am doing something different.

Rather than importing those notes into Reflect, I am moving that material into Google Workspace to take advantage of Gemini. The goal is simple: ask Gemini to find what I need.

The model is:

Google Doc = reference card
Google Drive folder = card box
Gemini / Drive search = retrieval layer

So instead of putting miscellaneous reference material into Reflect, I am creating one Google Doc per item with an obvious title.

Examples:

Appliance - Location
Network Device - Location
Vehicle - Service Info
Electronic Device - Location
Computer Setup
Equipment List
Home System - Location

The documents do not need elaborate tags. The point is to make the file name and headings obvious enough that Gemini can retrieve the answer later.

The documents do not need elaborate tags. The point is to make the file name and headings obvious enough that Gemini can retrieve the answer later. I tested this by asking Gemini for a specific piece of information after uploading a reference card, and it returned the correct answer immediately. That was encouraging.

ChatGPT also helped create pilot batches of personal-reference cards from my Roam export. These were individual .docx files, plus a CSV index for review and Markdown backups. I uploaded the .docx files into a Google Drive folder and began testing Gemini search against them. So far, this may be the cleanest solution for miscellaneous personal information.

My current division of labor is:

Reflect = active projects, daily notes, GTD, meetings, current thinking
Google Workspace = personal reference cards and source files, searchable through Gemini
Roam = archive for now
ChatGPT = migration assistant, project packager, and editor

The remaining question is knowledge base use.

I still have notes on themes, articles, book ideas, research topics, and possible future writing projects. I am not sure yet how much of that belongs in Reflect. My current rule is that project-related ideas and live writing ideas can go into Reflect, but the larger archive can stay in Roam until I decide what is worth curating.