Roam Research
Roam Research is a web-based note-taking application launched in 2019 that popularised bidirectional [[wikilinks]], block references, and the daily-notes pattern in personal knowledge management.
Roam Research is a hosted note-taking application created by Conor White-Sullivan and first released publicly in 2019. Its interface centres on a daily-notes journal in which users drop wikilink-style references — writing Concept anywhere creates and links a page of that title — and every page automatically shows a list of incoming references, called backlinks. This bidirectional linking model, combined with block-level addressing (each bullet has a unique identifier that can be transcluded elsewhere), is often credited with popularising the "networked thought" or "second brain" style of personal knowledge management. Roam's design borrowed both the Page Title bracket syntax from the wiki tradition and the outliner format associated with tools like WorkFlowy and the earlier Notational Velocity. Its 2020–2021 popularity spurred a wave of similar tools — most notably Obsidian (software), Logseq, RemNote, and Tana — many of which kept the bracket link syntax for compatibility. Roam itself uses a hosted subscription model rather than local files, and its market share has declined relative to the local-first alternatives that followed.