Vault layout

Folders are for you to browse, never for search to use. recall, the search command, ignores them entirely, so where a note sits never affects whether you find it. One carve-out: folders starting with _ or . hold control files, and both search and check skip them, so don’t file notes there. That frees the folders to be an honest map of your life instead of a filing system you fight.

The layout

Three kinds of folder, each with a real reason to exist. Entities get one home each and everything links to them. Life-areas hold most of your content, and you pick the set. Forms are split out by how you use them. Hover or tap any row below and it explains itself.

• vault/ everything search sees
• at the root the vault's own bookkeeping: a map, a primer, a timeline, the tag list
• index.md
• hot.md
• log.md
• _tags.md
• entities one home each, everything else links here
• people/

  One note per human you deal with.

  people/<name>.md

  A rename moves the old name into aliases and keeps the file, so nothing that links here breaks.

• orgs/
• holdings/
• life-areas you pick the set, most content lives here
• identity/
• health/
• finances/
• work/
• life/
• projects/
• + your own
• forms split out by how you use them, not by topic
• events/
• mistakes/

entity people/

One note per human you deal with.

people/<name>.md

A rename moves the old name into aliases and keeps the file, so nothing that links here breaks.

How the model files a note

The model makes the call itself, checked top to bottom, and the first match wins.

1. 1

   Is it a person, org, or holding (an owned thing whose state you track)?

   File it in the entity folder, whatever the topic.

   • people/
   • orgs/
   • holdings/
2. no match, keep going
3. 2

   Is it a dated event, a lesson learned, or a project with a status?

   Those have their own folders.

   • events/
   • mistakes/
   • projects/
4. no match, keep going
5. 3

   Otherwise it is topical.

   File it by life-area.

   • identity/
   • health/
   • finances/
   • work/
   • life/
   • + your own

What carries the meaning

The folders are just drawers. The meaning rides in a few short labels at the top of every note, so a note keeps what it means even when it moves. Touch any label below to see what it marks.

vault/finances/german-tax-classes.md

---

type: note

kind: reference

tags: [taxes, germany]

domain: finances mirrors the folder

summary: How the German tax classes pair up one line, written at ingest

---

# German tax classes the H1 is the title

• type in the header what the object is: person, org, holding, project, principle, note, mistake, event
• kind in the header what form it takes: a belief, a model, a policy, a how-to, a rating
• tags in the header what it is about, a list that grows on its own, one idea per tag
• folder in the path where you browse for it, the one axis search never reads

A note in a life-area folder also names its life-area in the header (domain:), and check complains when the folder and the field disagree. That covers the shipped set (identity, health, finances, work, life) and any life-area you add yourself, once you name it under ## Domains in vault/_folders.md.

A folder you share

Some things belong to more than one person: the flat, the bills, the dates you both need. A mount is a folder inside vault/ holding a tree that is kept somewhere else, usually a small shared repo two people each check out at the same path. Name it under ## Mounts in vault/_folders.md and check stops asking its notes to link into your graph, because their graph lives on the other side. A mount can carry its own _folders.md, and then its folders are checked by its own rules, and it keeps its own snapshots in <mount>/_raw/.

Sharing a note is moving it. imprnt vault move life/flat household/life puts the note in the shared folder, deletes the private copy, rewrites every link that pointed at it, and prints who can read it now. There is no copy verb, on purpose: two copies of one fact drift apart, and the one in the shared folder is the one the other person reads. The move refuses a note whose source: points into your private raw/, and one whose links to people or organizations have no answer inside the mount, because both are dead ends for everyone but you. Afterwards check watches the same boundary and reports it to you, the only person who can see what the link meant: seam-leak for a shared note whose link resolves only in your vault, seam-dead-source for one still pointing at your private snapshots.

Tags grow on their own

_tags.md holds your tags and a synonym map, and the list grows with no approval step.

1. 1
   the model tags it

   It picks the best tag that fits, and coins a new one if none does.

2. 2
   check syncs the list

   Every tag your notes use lands in _tags.md, along with the synonym map.

3. 3
   check flags lookalikes you

   Near-duplicate spellings get surfaced for you to merge.

   • finance
   • finances

Coining is automatic, but picking the winning name is a judgment call, so that last step stays yours.

The data is the knowledge

the one rule of filing

Filing adds, it never removes.

recall searches vault/ only, so anything left behind in raw/ (the folder of untouched originals) is invisible to it. The note has to carry the source's real payload in full: tables, lists, IDs, numbers, dates, prices, doses, exact wording. The summary goes on top of that, never in place of it.

the note that loses it

# health insurance

Premiums went up this year.

full table: see the source file

The numbers stayed behind in raw/, where search never looks.

the note that keeps it

# health insurance

Premiums went up this year.

basic	89 → 104 /mo
plus	129 → 151 /mo

The rows ride in the note, so any question about them has an answer.

The test before a note is done: could you answer a specific question from the vault note alone, without opening the original? If the answer is only in raw/, you dropped the knowledge. Put it back.