I’ve been exploring DEVONagent, but I’m not quite sure how to make the most of it. I rely heavily on DEVONthink and am very satisfied with its functionality. Naturally, I keep trying to find ways to integrate DEVONagent into my workflow, but I feel like I’m missing the core purpose of the tool—or at least how to best utilise it.
For those who use DEVONagent, what are your use cases, and how do you incorporate it into your work?
Thank you in advance!
I have been consistently disappointed with DEVONagent. I read an article the other day that tried to explain it as a tool to keep up with new developments in extremely niche areas of interest. You can set it up to search the web for this topic, and then deliver the results to you on a regular basis. Personally, I find RSS much better suited to this use, and find DEVONAgent to respond to my search queries mostly with spam and other junk.
This thread is a couple of years old now, but I posted some bits in it about my own use, which has given me a completely undeserved reputation in my Department as the colleague who knows everything about everything. I do also need DT to manage all the saved digests, though.
Is this in academic use, as the OP was asking about? I’m really surprised to hear this; my own experience has been that academic resources are absolutely made for DA. (The article mentioned is presumably this one, which is well worth a read, though the “niche interest” use is quite different from how I use it and mileage may be more variable.)
Technical research. For example, I need to keep up with new developments in AWS capabilities, Linux containers, Kubernetes, Terraform, CloudFormation, network security, etc… NetNewsWire handles all this beautifully.
I don’t know, maybe I’ll give it another shot and see how it goes for a week or so.
Yes, I don’t really use it for keeping up with subjects by running automated searches (unless there’s a news story I’m following, which it’s pretty good at). For me its superpower is in the initial stage of researching a topic I don’t know my way around, getting a feel for the state of the conversation, and identifying entry points and key bibliography. Embarrassingly often this turns out to be somewhere on my own computer; I’ve learned always to include DT Server in search sets for stuff I’ve already found and forgotten.