I was writing an email about a vendor we used before. I couldn’t recall some details, so I ran a search in my mailbox.

As expected, I found past threads with some discussions. But also it pulled up newsletters and mailing list mentions I’ve been subscribed to. There were product updates, industry news and a few casual mentions of this vendor. I barely remembered getting those. But they turned out to be relevant and useful.

This wasn’t planned. I don’t organize my mail. No tags, no system. Just dumb accumulation. Still, it worked. For a moment, it felt like omni-search across my personal knowledge base. I don’t have one.

This kind of “omni-search” rarely happens. Most information we deal with sits in separate silos: chats, notes, browsing history, bookmarks, screenshots, calendar events. Even if you wanted to make it all searchable, the fragmentation across tools and accounts makes it unrealistic. You might get close if you limit the scope and put your newsletters close to email. But the full picture is hard to put together. And PKM tools expect too much manual work or capture too little.

So when something like this happens — a regular email search quietly returns useful, cross-context results with zero setup, it feels oddly effective.

Not something we can count on, but really good when it happens.

Discussion: BSKY, LI