Field Notes

meta

Wiki type system

StatusStableUpdatedSupportsnotes

Every note in the wiki carries a type field that declares the role it plays. The type is a warranty contract: it tells the reader what kind of truth the note promises and how that truth was produced.

The nine types

The type vocabulary is small and stable. Each type serves a distinct function in the knowledge flow from evidence to navigation.

Source

A source note describes one immutable evidence artifact stored under src/sources/. It records what the artifact is, where it came from, and what it supports — but it does not reproduce the artifact’s argument. Source notes are the wiki’s provenance layer: they anchor claims to durable, revisitable evidence.

Concept

A concept note defines a reusable idea: a mechanism, doctrine, framework, or technical standard. Its warranty is descriptive — “X is such-and-such” — and its job is an accurate account of what X is. Other notes build arguments from concepts; a concept should not itself argue for a conclusion the vault has a stake in.

Entity

An entity note describes a named, individuated thing in the world: a person, organization, product or service, protocol, standard, statute, or a court judgment tracked for its effects. Its warranty is the same as a concept’s — accurate description of a named thing — but its subject is concrete rather than abstract. The test against concept is ownership: a specific party controls what an entity is and what it becomes, while nobody owns Reproducible builds and any party can instantiate it.

Event

An event note describes something that happened: a bounded episode with participants, a timeline, and consequences. Data breaches, criminal cases, regulatory actions, and public controversies are events. Its warranty is narrative fidelity — an accurate account of what unfolded, when, and per whom — rather than the identity claim an entity note makes. The bound may be an instant or two decades.

Question

A question note states an independently nameable open question the wiki wants answered: a research gap, an unresolved contradiction between notes, or a decision that needs evidence the vault does not yet hold. Questions are pages so they can attract sources and backlinks, and so just query "type=question" enumerates the research frontier. When research settles a question, the findings go into the affected subject notes, the question note records the answer and its provenance, and its status promotes to stable.

Synthesis

A synthesis note asserts a proposition and argues it from its sources. Its conclusion is one the vault has a stake in, and its warranty is that the conclusion follows from the cited evidence. A synthesis is the wiki’s primary output for decisions, evaluations, and warranted claims.

The name synthesis was chosen because it names a process that happens at every level — even a concept note may synthesize three sources into a definition — but the type marker is the output: a warranted, stake-bearing conclusion.

Essay

An essay records the user’s own thinking: a position, speculation, or line of argument that the cited sources cannot warrant. The type is the warranty label: a synthesis promises conclusions derive from sources; an essay promises only that it faithfully states the user’s view. Sources are optional. Attributing the position to the user in the opening and marking speculation as speculation keeps the essay honest about its provenance.

Index

An index note is a curated entry point that routes readers into a region of the wiki. It does not argue or define; it selects and organizes. The Index is the top-level entry point; individual topic clusters may earn their own index pages when they grow large enough to need one.

Meta

A meta note describes or visualizes the wiki itself: its architecture, maintenance procedures, vocabulary, and history. Meta notes are excluded from the generated knowledge graphs so that maintenance surfaces do not distort the subject map.

How types relate

The main knowledge flow runs from evidence and questions through reusable articles into synthesis and navigation:

flowchart TD
  evidence["Immutable evidence"]
  source@{ shape: cyl, label: "source" }
  question@{ shape: diamond, label: "question" }
  concept@{ shape: rounded, label: "concept" }
  entity@{ shape: hex, label: "entity" }
  event@{ shape: trap-t, label: "event" }
  synthesis@{ shape: subproc, label: "synthesis" }
  essay@{ shape: doc, label: "essay" }
  index@{ shape: stadium, label: "index" }
  reader["Reading entry point"]
  meta@{ shape: circle, label: "meta" }
  wiki["Wiki system"]

  evidence --> source
  question -. guides inquiry .-> source
  source --> concept
  source --> entity
  source --> event
  concept & entity & event --> synthesis
  essay -. interprets .-> synthesis
  concept & entity & event & synthesis & essay --> index
  index --> reader
  meta -. explains and records .-> wiki

essay sits alongside the main flow, interpreting synthesis without being built from it. meta operates on the wiki system rather than its subject matter.

Lifecycle statuses

Every note also carries a status field that describes whether the note is presently usable at its declared scope:

Status Meaning
seed A useful capture or skeleton that still lacks enough definition, grounding, structure, or connections to stand on its own
working A usable note with a known material gap, unresolved contradiction, incomplete claim checking, or an active hypothesis that still needs evidence
stable A coherent note at its current explicit scope whose material claims have been checked, important limitations are represented, and no known gap prevents reliance
stale A note with time-sensitive claims now known to be unsafe to rely on until they are revalidated or corrected

Status describes reliability at the present scope, not age, length, or likelihood of receiving future edits. A short source card can be stable when it accurately describes its immutable artifact; an ambitious business plan can remain working when its central assumptions have not yet been validated.

The lifecycle flows between states based on evidence, not time alone. A due review_after date creates a verification task but does not change status by itself.

flowchart LR
  New[just new] --> Seed[seed]
  Seed -->|coherent but materially incomplete| Working[working]
  Seed -->|adequate at current scope| Stable[stable]
  Working -->|known material gaps resolved| Stable
  Stable -->|new material gap opens| Working
  Seed -->|known unreliable current claims| Stale[stale]
  Working -->|known unreliable current claims| Stale
  Stable -->|known unreliable current claims| Stale
  Stale -->|revalidated with gaps remaining| Working
  Stale -->|revalidated at adequate scope| Stable

The concept-synthesis boundary

The most contested boundary in the type system is between concept and synthesis. The distinction is functional, not topical: a note’s title cannot settle its type. “Invoking the Fifth Amendment can itself be used as evidence” is a thesis-shaped title doing concept work — a building block for other notes — while “EU private communications law” is a thing-shaped title doing synthesis work — a stake-bearing conclusion for the venture notes.

The test is the warranty: does the note define a thing (“X is such-and-such”), or does it argue a proposition and reach a conclusion the vault has a stake in? When other synthesis notes reference a note as a building block they argue from, it is doing concept work whatever its title sounds like.

See also Ontology redesign proposals for the reasoning behind this vocabulary.

The entity-event boundary

Entities and events divide on how their subject exists in time. An entity is wholly itself at any moment you look at it and changes by participating in things. An event is only ever partly present, because it is the change. Mullvad is the same company before and after a controversy; the Mullvad donation controversy is not a thing that had something happen to it.

Formal ontologies have carved here for decades. BFO and DOLCE call it continuant versus occurrent, and CIDOC CRM further separates what someone intended (E7 Activity) from what merely occurred (E5 Event). The wiki uses plain words for the same cut because its vocabulary is read by agents at a glance, not exchanged between institutions. The useful import is the test, not the terminology: ask whether the subject persists through time or unfolds through it.

Cultural naming does not decide it. Kevinfallet is a Swedish proper noun and still an event, because the note narrates a death, an investigation, a nineteen-year designation, and a reopening.

Documents are the near-miss case. A statute persists and gets amended, so UK Online Safety Act is an entity; enacting it was an episode the vault does not track separately. A court judgment is usually a source note, because the vault saves the text: GC and Others C-136-17 and Conseil d’État 401258 are cards for artifacts. The proceeding that produced a judgment is an event, and the doctrine it established is a concept, so one court case can warrant three notes of three types.

Design decisions

  • The vocabulary is deliberately small. Nine types cover every note in the vault; finer distinctions live in tags or in frontmatter fields that queries can match.
  • Types are checked at lint time. just lint verifies that every note carries one of the nine allowed types.
  • meta notes are excluded from generated graphs so the wiki’s maintenance surfaces do not distort its subject map.
  • There is no subtype field, and the vault tried four vocabularies for one before concluding that. On 2026-07-25 the field was renamed kind so type could return as a subtype, entity and event vocabularies shipped, and everything was reverted within the day. The reasoning is in Ontology redesign proposals.
  • The test a subtype has to pass is whether its members behave differently: different review cadence, different structure, different handling by some tool or procedure. enforcement, feature, the event vocabulary, and the entity vocabulary each failed it. A subtype that only records what a subject is duplicates tags without their flexibility.
  • entity is broad by design. It covers people, organizations, products, vendor features, protocols, standards, networks, enacted law, and published works. AGENTS.md lists the range with examples so agents can place a note without a vocabulary to record.
  • Subtypes are not lint-enforced. A value outside the vocabulary fails silently rather than at check time, which is the tradeoff for a field that can grow without a migration.
  • The vocabulary describes what the vault intends to hold, not only what it already holds. judgment has no members yet and is listed so a ruling tracked for its effects has an obvious home rather than being forced into legislation. work has one member, the documentary series Adam och övergreppen, and exists because a published journalistic work is neither a product nor an organization.

This note cites no sources of its own.

Working out connections…