The Roam Research Networked Thinker

“What was the moment this product clicked?” — share yours

A researcher, academic, writer, or knowledge-intensive professional who uses Roam because it is the only tool that treats the connection between ideas as a first-class object. They write in Daily Notes. They [[bracket]] everything. They have a graph with 3,000–15,000 nodes that they've been building for 2–4 years. They know their graph is their most valuable intellectual asset. They also know that Roam's development has slowed, that the tool has rough edges, and that they've considered migrating to Obsidian or Logseq at least twice. They haven't migrated. The switching cost is partly the data — mostly the habit.

• →Capture ideas in a way that connects them to everything related, automatically
• →Build a knowledge base that gets more useful the longer they use it — compounding, not filing
• →Think through complex problems by following the links their past self left

• —Roam's development pace — features requested for years, still not shipped
• —Performance on large graphs — the tool slows down as it becomes most valuable
• —The learning curve that makes Roam inaccessible to collaborators or teammates
• —Mobile experience that's functional but not at the quality of the desktop graph

• Most note-taking is filing, not thinking — Roam enforces the difference
• The value of a note is not in the note itself but in what it connects to
• A knowledge base that doesn't compound over time is just organized forgetting

Has been in Roam for 2–5 years. Writes Daily Notes consistently. Has 3,000–15,000 nodes — pages, block references, linked mentions. Uses Roam for research, writing, meeting notes, and evergreen note development. Has a consistent naming convention for certain page types: authors, books, concepts, people. Uses `{{query}}` blocks for dynamic views into the graph. Has recommended Roam to colleagues; few have adopted it. Has a backup system (Roam's export, Dropbox sync). Reads the Roam community Discord occasionally. Has filed a feature request. Still waiting.

• →Performance optimization for graphs above 5,000 nodes restores the fluency
• →that makes Roam worth using at the scale where it becomes most valuable
• →Mobile app with full block editing and bidirectional linking removes the
• →second-class experience for capture and review on the go
• →Collaboration features that let two people link within and between their graphs
• →extend the networked thinking model to intellectual partnerships
• →Export fidelity that preserves block references and link structure in Markdown
• →removes the vendor lock-in anxiety that prevents full commitment to the tool

Pairs with `obsidian-primary-user` for the Roam-hosted vs. local-file linked knowledge graph comparison. Contrast with `logseq-primary-user` for the proprietary-hosted vs. open-source-local networked thought tool philosophy. Use with `readwise-primary-user` for the Readwise-to-Roam highlight pipeline that feeds the graph with external reading.