Distillation status determines directory placement
Type: note · Status: seedling
The kb/instructions/ directory collects procedures distilled for execution. The kb/notes/ directory collects discursive reasoning. This note proposes sharpening that boundary into an organizational principle: if an artifact has been distilled into a procedure — reasoning stripped, steps sequenced, optimized for an agent that needs to act — it belongs in instructions/. The criterion is not "compressed" or "frequently loaded" but specifically "distilled into an executable procedure."
The immediate trigger: kb/instructions/WRITING.md sits at the top of the KB directory as a writing guide. It is a procedure — checklists, templates, imperative steps extracted from methodology notes. An agent loading WRITING.md is executing a procedure (how to write a note), not reasoning about knowledge design. By the procedural-distillation criterion, it belongs in kb/instructions/.
Why this might work
Maintenance becomes directory-scoped. If all procedural distillations live in one place, you can audit them as a set: are they current relative to their source notes? Are they compressed enough? Do they overlap? Today, procedural artifacts are scattered (WRITING.md at kb/, skills in instructions/ subdirectories).
The boundary is legible. "Is this a procedure an agent executes, or reasoning an agent deliberates with?" is a question agents and humans can answer quickly. It maps directly to the reading mode: follow steps vs. build understanding.
It aligns with the loading hierarchy. Context-loading strategy describes a hierarchy from always-loaded to on-demand. Procedures are loaded when an agent needs to act; discursive notes are loaded when an agent needs to reason. Grouping by reading mode makes the hierarchy concrete in the filesystem.
How to evaluate
Confirming evidence (look for these over the next few maintenance cycles):
- Maintenance operations on
kb/instructions/feel coherent — auditing and updating procedures is easier because they're co-located - Moving WRITING.md to instructions doesn't break workflows or reduce its discoverability (CLAUDE.md routes to it regardless of path)
- The boundary helps when deciding where new artifacts go — "is this a procedure to execute?" is a faster routing question than the current type-based routing
Disconfirming evidence (any of these would weaken the principle):
- Some artifacts are genuinely mixed — partly distilled procedure, partly discursive reasoning — and the boundary forces an awkward split
- The
instructions/directory becomes too large or heterogeneous to audit as a set (undermining the maintenance benefit) - The prominence loss from moving WRITING.md out of
kb/causes agents to miss it despite CLAUDE.md routing
Open Questions
- Should this apply retroactively to all existing artifacts, or only to new ones?
- Does the skill/instruction distinction (automatic routing vs. manual invocation) still matter as a sub-boundary within
instructions/, or does it collapse into a single collection? - How does this interact with the stabilisation gradient? Distillation and stabilisation are different operations — does the directory boundary conflate them?
Relevant Notes:
- skills derive from methodology through distillation — foundation: defines the distillation relationship this note proposes using as a directory boundary
- instructions are skills without automatic routing — context: the existing instruction/note boundary that this principle would sharpen
- context-loading strategy — enables: the loading hierarchy that distillation-based placement aligns with
- areas exist because useful operations require reading notes together — parallel: areas organize notes for comparative reading; distillation status organizes artifacts for maintenance operations
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