Short composable notes maximize combinatorial discovery

Type: note · Status: seedling · Tags: learning-theory, foundations

The library layer (kb/notes/) exists for co-loading. Discovery — seeing shared structure across particulars — requires co-presence: you can't find that three notes share unnamed structure if only one fits in context. Under bounded context, the number of notes that fit determines the surface area for cross-cutting connections. Short, atomic notes maximize that surface area.

The gain is probabilistic, not mechanical — not every pair yields a discovery. What matters is breadth of independent perspectives. Notes from distant domains are more likely to reveal shared structure than additional notes within the same topic. The library should be optimized for this: many small, independently authored claims that can be loaded together in varied combinations.

Resolution-switching complements this. Claim titles and descriptions give broad surface-level pairing without loading full bodies; full notes are loaded selectively where depth is needed. Short notes make both modes cheaper.

Prior work

Atomic, composable units are a recurring design principle:

  • Zettelkasten (Luhmann) — one idea per note, connections between notes. "One claim, one note" is Luhmann's atomicity principle. The most direct ancestor.
  • Modular design (Parnas, 1972) — modules hide design decisions and expose interfaces. The Unix philosophy ("do one thing well, compose through pipes") is the same principle applied to programs.
  • Faceted classification (Ranganathan, 1933) — describe items along independent combinable facets rather than a single hierarchy. Composable notes are facets.

What's specific to our context is the bounded-context motivation: atomicity here is driven by a hard token limit that makes co-loading capacity the scarce resource, not by filing convenience or code maintainability.

TODO: This survey is from the agent's training data, not systematic. Zettelkasten methodology in particular has extensive practitioner literature on atomicity trade-offs worth ingesting.

The design rule

One claim, one note. The title states the claim, the body supports it, the footer connects it. If a note has multiple ## sections making independent claims, that's a signal to decompose.

Longer synthesized views belong in workshops or are generated. Theory overviews, campaign understanding, multi-note summaries — these are consumers of library notes, not library notes themselves. They live in kb/work/ as workshop artifacts with lifecycles, or are generated (like indexes). When the purpose is served, the workshop artifact expires but the library notes remain available for recombination.

Evidence

The improvement log provides examples. Entries tagged ABSTRACTION and SYNTHESIS are discoveries made by co-loading notes and recognizing shared structure:

  • "shared unnamed structure: execution-boundary compression" — found across five notes from different theoretical angles
  • "two independent decompositions of agent memory from different traditions that together predict a two-axis taxonomy" — found by co-loading notes grounded in cognitive science alongside notes grounded in computer architecture

The structure emerged from the juxtaposition of independent perspectives. A single long note synthesizing all of memory theory would have contained the same information but wouldn't have surfaced the cross-cutting structure — it would have pre-committed to one narrative instead of leaving the connections available for discovery.

Tension with argument coherence

Some arguments genuinely need space — the reasoning from premises to conclusion loses force when atomized. Evolving understanding needs re-distillation not composition — when a consumer needs the whole picture, re-distilling into a single narrative beats composing fragments.

The resolution: coherent narratives are workshop artifacts, not library artifacts. The library stores premises and conclusions as separate composable notes. The workshop assembles them into narratives for a specific purpose. When the narrative expires, the atomic notes remain.

Relevant Notes: