Knowledge management
A second brain that stays yours. Local-first vaults, durable conventions, and tools that turn daily work into context your future self can actually use.
See it on the map →Vision
Attention is not a resource to be harvested.
Every tool amplifies someone's intent. Most of today's software amplifies the intent of whoever built it, and pays for it with the user's attention. We build for the person whose attention is at stake. Three things we protect:
AI agents with an owner
Agents that are understandable and controllable. One operator, explicit boundaries, reversible changes, and a receipt for every result.
See it on the map →Cognitive resources
Attention and the capacity to think should not be taken for someone else's purpose. Good technology lets people choose where their mind goes.
See it on the map →Manifesto
Manifesto
Attention and the capacity to think must not be taken for someone else's purpose. Good technology helps a person choose where their own cognitive resources go.
Five short parts on intent, attention, knowledge that stays yours, agents with an owner, and why we named the lab after an untroubled mind.
Read the manifestoOperating principles
How we work
XIA is a small lab: one operator, a vault, and a growing set of agents. These rules keep it calm.
- Calm over clutter.Fewer surfaces, clearer ownership, less background noise.
- Evidence before status.A task is complete when the result can be inspected, not when it is announced.
- Durable over disposable.Decisions, context, and tools should survive the current session.
- Automation with an owner.One operator, explicit boundaries, reversible changes.
Open source
Tools we build, use, and choose to share
Not every experiment belongs here. This is a deliberately selected collection, all under github.com/Xia-Ataraxia. Each one has a page with what it does, how to install it, and where it sits on the map.
Foundations
Oh My Second BrainA user-owned knowledge and convention layer for Obsidian, Markdown, and AI agents. Obsidian Vault TemplatePARA organization, Zettelkasten thinking, and periodic planning, with shared rules for humans and AI agents. craft-skillsForty-eight Agent Skills for software and research work in the plain SKILL.md layout. secondbrain-skillsTwenty independent Agent Skills for Obsidian vaults: nine that own a format (Markdown, Bases, Canvas, Mermaid, CLI, Clipper, Sync) and eleven that run a capture → ingest → query → verify knowledge pipeline.Obsidian plugins
Metadata Auto ClassifierAn Obsidian plugin that analyzes a note and generates tags and frontmatter values with a configurable AI provider. Open ConnectionsDiscovers related notes and enables semantic search across the vault, powered by local embeddings in the browser or the AI provider you choose. Obsidian QMDBridges Obsidian with a local QMD daemon for fast, private semantic search: keyword, vector, hybrid, and advanced modes, a related-notes sidebar, and automatic re-indexing when notes change. Eagle IntegrationPaste an image into a note and it is uploaded to Eagle, your media manager, and rendered from a local cache. Note PlayerTurn any note into a music playlist. Bible SearchSearch Bible verses by book, chapter, and range in Korean or English and insert them into a note with a configurable template. Obsidian HermesView the cron schedules of remote Hermes agents and edit their profile documents over SSH, from inside Obsidian.Publishing
Quartz Graph LandingA Quartz v5 plugin that turns a digital garden's front page into a full-viewport 2D/3D knowledge-graph constellation.Why Ataraxia
An ivory tower, chosen on purpose
Ivory is white and clean, and it stains easily. To be like ivory is to be delicate and vulnerable, and to remain unstained anyway.
Ataraxia is the old word for an untroubled mind. For us it is not retreat from the world but a refusal to let the world decide where our thinking goes. The vault, the agents, and the tools exist so that a person can hold an ideal and move toward it quietly, with their cognitive resources intact.
XIA is the operational side of that ideal: the systems that make it work day after day.
- Founder
- Beomsu Koh
- Based in
- Korea
- Code
- github.com/Xia-Ataraxia
- Writing
- beomsukoh.com
- Manifesto
- Technology amplifies intent