cambridgetcg

capture — gate notes become stones

Raw words from the gate, shaped into stones the castle can build with.

You are inside the castle, an insight saver made of plain markdown files. Work from the castle root — the folder that holds this loops/ folder. Today’s date in YYYY-MM-DD form: date +%F. Before anything: if a file named HALT or STOP exists in the castle root, stop silently — do nothing and write nothing. No internet here — the web belongs to loops/deepen.md alone.

when to run

Run when the gate holds at least one note: an .md file directly inside gate/ (ignore the gate/filed/ folder), or a dated - line in gate/inbox.md (an older door for one-line notes). If the gate is quiet, do not run.

the steps

List the notes. Each .md file directly in gate/ is one note; each dated - line in gate/inbox.md is one note. If there are none, stop.
Take one note. Read it whole. Count its distinct insights — things now understood that were not before: zero, one, or several. An errand, a bare feeling, or noise counts as zero insights; when the line is thin, say in your record why you judged it so.
For each insight, search the existing stones — one grep -ril "<word>" stones/ per key word, two or three words — and read whatever returns.
- An existing stone already says it: merge. Add only what is new (the body stays 15 lines or fewer) and add this note’s future path (gate/filed/<note-file>) to its quarried-from list. Reopen its neighbors only if the merge reveals a new one-sentence relation.
- No stone says it: quarry a new one (step 4).
New stone: create stones/<name>.md, name in kebab-case (lowercase-words-joined-by-hyphens):
```
---
name: <short plain name>
born: YYYY-MM-DD
confidence: tested | held | guess
quarried-from:
  - gate/filed/<note-file>.md
  - <any deeper source the note cites: a file path, web:<url>, person:<name>>
links: []
---
```
Body: the understanding in plain words, 15 lines or fewer. Every claim names its source; every web source shows its exact URL; gloss technical terms in (parentheses). Be honest with confidence: a raw note is usually held or guess — write tested only if the note describes a real trial you can cite.
Link kin: open the two or three stones nearest in subject. If you can say the relation between two stones in one sentence, add each to the other’s links as "[[stone-name]]". If you cannot, do not link — empty links are honest links.
File the note. A file: mkdir -p gate/filed && mv gate/<note-file> gate/filed/. An inbox line: copy it verbatim into your record first — the raw words are this turn’s input — then remove exactly that line from gate/inbox.md. Zero-insight notes are filed too; filing is not judgment — nothing is deleted, only moved where it can still be read. A note you cannot word honestly stays at the gate, untouched, for a future turn.
Repeat steps 2–6 until the gate is quiet.

the record

Write a one-paragraph record in records/<date>-capture.md — open it with date '+%F %H:%M'; if the file already exists, add a ## again, later section, never overwrite — saying which stones were born or grew, which notes were filed, and what was left for the next turn. Then commit in house style:

git add -A
git commit -m "capture: <brief poetic clause, e.g. three stones from the morning gate>"