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Tana Current Monthly Update (October 2025)

Each month we share what we’re working on, what’s about to ship, and where we’re headed next. These updates represent our current work in motion along with reflections about Tana’s direction. This October brings offline mode, navigation updates, expanded free plan features, and a look at our long-term thinking on the role of AI agents.
  • Matthew McKinlay
  • Oct 10, 2025

Major Releases Coming Soon

We’re rolling out several major updates in the coming weeks. Here’s what’s on the way:

1. Offline support in Tana Desktop

After extensive testing, offline mode is in the final stretch and soon ready to launch. We’ve been shaping how Tana works without Wi-Fi in two important ways.

Better handling of temporary network connection drops

  • Tana now handles temporary network connection drops smoothly (like driving into a tunnel, or WiFi blips).
  • Tana Desktop will automatically attempt to reconnect.
  • You can keep working, your changes will be synched when the connection is restored.

Working offline

  • You can now work in Tana during flights or extended periods without network connection.
  • All your workspaces are available when offline (no need to pre-select any workspaces or specific notes).
  • You can edit any notes in your personal workspaces
  • You can view shared workspaces (any workspace with invited collaborators), but won't be able to edit notes in these workspaces
  • You can use search and use @ mentions as normal. Tana will build out search indexes when you go offline (NB: not supported for very large workspaces over 300K nodes).
  • Switching between offline and online requires a reload, which may take a few minutes. You’ll be asked to confirm before going back online to ensure all your changes are synced.

You can enter into offline from the user menu, or from the loading screen if you reload when there is not connection.

This is a significant improvement over other services where you have to decide upfront which documents you want offline access to.

2. Tana Free gets AI credits

Free users will now get monthly AI credits to test out Tana's AI features.

What This Means:

Updated limitations on the Free plan:

  • Max. 3 additional workspaces beyond your personal workspace
  • Can only use the default model in AI chat (GPT-4o at the moment)
  • Limits on file uploads remain in place (5MB per file, 0.5GB total file storage)
  • Creating new command nodes now requires a paid plan
  • Mobile voice memos will save as audio if credits run out (can be transcribed later)
  • The existing paid features Google Calendar sync, password-protected publishing, publishing templates, and Input API integrations (like Readwise) are still reserved for Plus and Pro.

For a full overview of all the features in plans, see the pricing page.

The free plan provides real value while paid plans unlock all the power features for advanced users who use Tana daily and want to optimize their workflows.

3. New Importers

Notion Importer - Currently in testing

  • Makes it easier to migrate from Notion
  • Brings over content structure (databases convert to Tana tables)
  • Some manual work needed for views and field types
  • Great for using existing content as AI context

Looking for Testers: Check the #import-tools channel in Slack or DM Ingrid to get early access.

4. Meeting Notetaker Improvements

Ongoing work to improve reliability:

  • Better handling of connection drops
  • Improved resilience and stability
  • Fallbacks for network or provider issues

New fallback option in Tana Labs

  • Automatically records audio as backup during meetings
  • Retranscribe if needed or change the output language
  • To enable: go to User menu → Tana Labs

5. Updated Navigation & UI

A significant update that simplifies navigation, making Tana more accessible for new users while adding power for experienced ones.

New Customizable Sidebar:

  • New home apps that come preconfigured:
    • Recent view showing recently edited notes (auto-sorted)
    • Recently edited: Shorcut to the three last edited nodes
    • AI chats overview
    • All supertags overview
    • Published content

The home apps are just normal search nodes, so you can also customize them how you want. In addition, the sidebar now has some powerful tools for tailoring it to your needs:

  • Create custom sections to group nodes you're working on
  • Drag and drop nodes anywhere in the sidebar to add or rearrange them
  • Progress indicators for nodes with progress bars

You can now design your sidebar so it only show what you care about - the daily note is the only mandatory item.

Global Create Button:

  • Quick shortcuts: new node, AI chat, checklist, super tag
  • Tagged node templates from starter content
  • Makes creating super tags less confusing for new users

New List Navigation View:

  • Quick browsing with click-to-view panel
  • Easy navigation between nodes
  • Perfect for dashboards
  • Pinnable fields for quick filtering

Note: The current "list view" is being renamed to "outline view" (this may cause some initial confusion during the transition).

Focus Mode:

  • Fully collapsible sidebar for a clean canvas
  • Feels like a dedicated app view
  • Much more powerful for focused work

Mobile Updates:

  • Browse tab renamed to Home (mirrors desktop sidebar exactly)
  • All sidebar items available as capture destinations
  • Long press to capture directly into any item
  • Easier navigation throughout the app

All your existing data will remain intact - this changes how you navigate, not your content or workflows. All the power features you love remain exactly as they are.

Agent Vision

While many platforms rush to add AI features, we’re taking a more deliberate path based on what we have learnt from seeing users use our AI agents. In the latest Tana Current session, Olav shared how we’re rethinking the role of agents as powerful collaborators, not just chatbots.

The Challenge with AI Agents

We've had agents in Tana for almost two years, but they've been challenging to set up, and we've noticed some patterns based on our experimentation. There's a fantastic feeling seeing an agent get work done in your graph. But we've now seen the opposite too- the hours lost to reconstructing things when the agent makes accumulative decisions. The main challenge we see is being sure that the agent is not going to mess up the information around the task. We're confident on the role of the knowledge graph to solve some challenges, but we also can see that when agents roam around your graph, assessing what they change and why is a big issue. And we are even more convinced that a measure of progress is not tasks done any more particularly by the agent. More words, more tasks, mean you are getting closer to the outcome you want. It's even worse when you put it in the context of collaboration. As Olav put it: "We're destroying teamwork when everyone's using AI to write long emails and everyone else is using AI to summarize those emails so they don't have to read them."

Tana's Approach

Tana's vision for agents goes back to 2021 when the team committed to building an AI-powered knowledge graph.

We’re not there yet, but we’ve learned more than we expected over the past few years. After a long stretch of experimentation, we understand much better what works, what doesn’t, and what people actually find useful.

Our focus now is to move beyond adding AI for its own sake, to create agents that do real work, making thoughtful decisions and producing content that genuinely helps you make progress, even while you sleep.

This is where the team is exploring and we will have more to say about this soon.

How the Team Uses AI

The engineering team now requires using AI tools like Claude Code for everyday work. It's getting teams from zero to 80 super fast with the real engineering work happening from 80 to 100. This approach has given the team velocity not seen in the last three years.

Student Focus

The team has focused on supporting students with new resources and pricing.

50% Student Discount - Makes Tana even more affordable for students

New Templates by Theo:

  • Student Hub with video tutorials
  • Lecture recording and automatic summarization
  • Course management with linked learning
  • Networking template (for tracking who hosts the best parties!)
  • Study schedule by Maddie from Kinjun Koi

Find all templates at tana.inc/students or in the template store.

Community Events

The community team has launched a series of events to help users learn Tana, see Tana in action and connect with other Tanarians:

Regular Sessions:

  • Time to Learn Live with Theo (fortnightly)- Deep dives on specific Tana features
  • Live Build Sessions with Mark (fortnightly) - 60-minute themed builds from scratch
  • Drop in Sessions for Beginners with Ev Chapman (Weekly) - Relaxed opportunity to see Tana demo'd and ask any questions

In-Person Events:

The story of October 2025

October 2025 will be the month our offline era begins. It's exciting to get one most-requested features out to users.

At the same time, the team is thinking more deeply about where Tana is headed and where we can take the product next. The AI work Olav discussed represents longer-term thinking about how to make AI truly useful in a knowledge workspace, not just another chat interface, but agents that can meaningfully help with your work.

Next Tana Current: early November 2025, will be announced in Slack