Note Conventions

Scope note (2026-05-23). Describes conventions for the private vault (d:\Vault\AI Vault\). The Research/, Agents/, Sources/ paths below live in that vault, not in this Compendium repo. Compendium has its own structure — see the root README for the discipline-grouped layout (Sciences / Engineering-and-Robotics / Math-and-Compute / Society / Arts-and-Energy / Humanities / Walkthroughs / System).

File layout

  • Research/Topics/<topic-slug>.md — durable topic notes (one per concept)
  • Research/Sessions/<YYYY-MM-DD>/<slug>.md — per-session captures
  • Research/Sources/<source-slug>.md — external references (URLs, papers)
  • Agents/<agent-name>.md — per-agent memory & preferences

Markdown style

  • H1 = note title (matches frontmatter)
  • Use [[wikilinks]] for internal references
  • Code blocks: triple-backtick + language tag
  • Date format: ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ)

Tags

Use lowercase, dash-separated.

Library-canonical tag (one per note)

Every note carries exactly one library-canonical tag identifying which library it lives in:

LibraryCanonical tag
Chemistrychemistry-reference
Biologybiology-reference
MaterialsSciencematerials-science-reference
ClimateScienceclimate-reference
Engineeringengineering-reference
Roboticsrobotics-reference
Mathmath-reference
Computecompute-reference
Languageslanguage-reference
Economicseconomics-reference
Financefinance-reference
Lawlaw-reference
EnergyMarketsenergy-markets-reference
Musicmusic-reference
Philosophyphilosophy-reference
Historyhistory-reference
Linguisticslinguistics-reference
Anthropologyanthropology-reference
ReligiousStudiesreligious-studies-reference
Walkthroughswalkthroughs (no -reference suffix since walkthroughs aren’t a discipline)

Tier tag

Every note also carries tier1, tier2, or tier3 — plus family-index if it’s a T3 catalog, moc if it’s an index file.

Topical tags

Add 2-5 topical tags below the canonical for cross-cutting concepts. Examples: kinematics, oauth, gdpr, carbon-cycle, katex.

Bare-library tags (legacy + topical)

A bare library name (e.g., finance instead of finance-reference) is the topical form, used when a note from another library references a domain. Example: a Compute note about LLM-based financial-analytics tools might be tagged [compute-reference, t2, finance, llm] — the finance tag here means “this Compute note is about finance,” not “this note lives in the Finance library.”

Pre-2026-05 notes sometimes used bare library tags as the canonical. New notes should always use the -reference form for the canonical and reserve the bare form for the topical sense.

Suggested cross-cutting tags

  • research, decision, pattern, gotcha, reference
  • ai, obsidian, mcp, python, etc.
  • outcome:accomplished, outcome:failed, outcome:partial, outcome:superseded (per agents-learning-protocol)