A zettelkasten is a knowledge system where ideas connect and compound. This vault uses five note types, each serving a specific purpose.
Five Note Types
- Atomic Notes — Single concepts explained (300-500 words). The building blocks.
- Literature Notes — Insights from books, papers, and articles linked to atomic concepts.
- Hub Notes — Curated lists of related concepts for quick navigation.
- Maps of Content (MOCs) — Domain overviews showing how concepts organize.
- Structure Notes — Complete arguments synthesizing multiple atomic ideas.
Note Status
Notes progress through maturity stages:
- Seedling — Raw, early-stage ideas
- Growing — Active development
- Evergreen — Stable, ready for reference
- Archive — Historical context, no longer active
How These Notes Are Written
I’m a software engineer, not a writer — turning ideas into clean prose is genuinely hard for me. So I work the way I think, and let AI handle the writing.
Most notes start from a book I’ve read or listened to. From there, an AI pipeline I built extracts the key concepts, researches each one against outside sources, drafts the note, and links it into the rest of the vault. So the AI does real work here — not just phrasing, but research and synthesis. I then read each note, decide what’s worth keeping and how it connects, and promote the ones I trust to 🌳 Evergreen.
What the statuses mean for trust:
- 🌱 Seedling — AI-drafted, not yet reviewed by me. Treat as raw.
- 🌿 Growing — I’m actively reviewing and shaping it.
- 🌳 Evergreen — I’ve read it, curated it, and stand behind the thinking. Its citations have been automatically checked to confirm they exist and point to the right source.
On accuracy: citations are machine-verified for existence, but I read for the ideas, not to fact-check every sentence — so errors are possible, especially in Seedlings. This is learning in public: you’re watching me think, with a machine doing the research and the first draft. If you spot something wrong, let me know — I’d genuinely rather hear it.