Glossary

The words this book uses in a precise sense, in alphabetical order.

Absorb

To bring into your own Context a piece of knowledge that lived in another one.

You absorb when consulting is no longer enough: because the exact rule a decision rests on
has to be pinned down, because it needs rewording for your own perimeter, or because it must
stay available if the original Context is archived.

The copy does not become an idea without a past: it keeps the Context it came from, the
date it was taken, and what was reworded on the way. Without that, a year later you have a
note that is right and no idea what it rests on.

Reading creates a dependency; absorbing creates a responsibility.

Archive

To put away a Context whose work is finished, without erasing what it produced.

An exploration that succeeds proposes to its entity what now describes the product, then
archives itself. A hypothesis that comes to nothing is archived along with whatever stopped
it: not a failure to be wiped away, but what will save going down the same road again in two
years.

A small Context can also reach its aim, produce its deliverable, and be archived. Its value
lies in the continuity it gave the work, and in the trace it leaves if anyone later needs to
understand why the text took that direction.

Atomic note

A settled idea, drawn from a source or a conversation, that stands on its own.

A source rarely holds an idea that is ready to use: an interview mixes facts, examples,
opinions, hesitations and details particular to the situation being told. Transforming it is
not summarising everything, but pulling out what can be reused.

A strong idea is neither a striking formula nor a final truth. It has a clear centre of
gravity, is understood outside the text that gave rise to it, and stays bounded enough to be
confirmed, qualified or contradicted. Its title carries a proposition, not a theme.

It keeps its origin and its limits, which stops a particular account from turning into a
general rule. It is not fixed at the first draft: it can gain a nuance, a piece of evidence
or a relation without losing its identity — but a source that asserts something else does not
enrich it, it deserves a note of its own.

Blind dependency

A piece of knowledge you read at a neighbour's and do not know has changed.

The link is live, and that is what you want: a rule that evolves where it is owned is the
system working. The problem is not that it moves, it is not knowing. A Context knows whom
it depends on; it does not know when what it depends on moved.

That is half the mechanism, and it is the half that costs: you find the gap at proof-reading,
when the work is ready to go out.

Catch-all

The Context that takes in material whose subject has no Context yet: a sentence overheard,
a document, a hunch.

Without it, you would have to create a Context per scrap of an idea — and end up with fifty
spaces of no substance within weeks. With it, a rough filing convention becomes workable: it
serves to file what has an obvious place, and nothing more. The rest waits, and is found
again by describing what you are looking for rather than by remembering where you put it.

It empties in the opposite direction to explorations: the day a problem emerges, you create
the Context that goes with it, then go back to see what the catch-all had kept on the
subject.

Check

A few mechanical verifications run when saving.

Do all referenced files exist? Are the identifiers unique? Does every note state its sources?
Is a source that was added but never analysed flagged? Is the next action explicit?

They replace no judgement. They simply stop a structural error from passing itself off as a
problem of thought.

Checkpoint

The state of a Context frozen on a date: its counts and its next action, nothing more.

It is not a copy of the state. Its reason for being is that several can be compared, which
answers a question the state alone cannot: "where was I when I decided that?" A checkpoint
once laid down is never touched again.

Context

A system bounded by a human mission, in which an AI organises and brings to bear what is
known, where it is known from, how the pieces connect and where the work stands — so as to
help the human reach their aim without starting from nothing.

In doing so it builds up a lasting informational capital: the knowledge produced stays
available, grows richer over time, and can serve aims other than the one that gave rise to
it.

It differs from a conversation in what survives between two sessions. A conversation files
its information in the order it was said; work needs another order — an instruction given at
the start must still apply at the end, an old decision must prevent the same discussion from
being reopened.

It stays deliberately incomplete. Its strength does not come from being able to contain
everything, but from being able to bring the right information to bear at the right moment.

Context window

How much text an AI can hold in mind at one time.

It is the technical reason a Context stays small. Whatever is piled into it without need
degrades its reasoning rather than enriching it: handling a subject while forcing yourself to
read fifty books gives a worse result than two or three well-chosen references. An AI works
the same way.

Contradiction

Two propositions that each hold and pull the decision in opposite directions.

The Context neither resolves nor smooths it. It keeps both and makes their relation
explicit, which avoids two symmetrical mistakes: picking a side too early, or dissolving the
disagreement into a vague wording that troubles nobody.

Not every uncertainty deserves this treatment. It is kept for tensions that really bear on
what follows or on the quality of a decision. A contradiction stays open until a decision, a
new source or a rewording resolves it.

Between two Contexts, a divergence is not necessarily an error either: it may be a
difference of perimeter, or two readings that both hold. What is serious is ignoring it.

Decision

A choice that shapes the Context itself: how it is filed, what is loaded on opening, which
rule is adopted.

Not to be confused with a decision record, which keeps a judgement call about the subject of
the work. One organises the space, the other commits the content.

Decision record

The trace of a judgement call: what was decided against, what was accepted as a loss, what it
rested on.

It notes not only what was decided, but what was set aside and why — and that is the part
always missing six months later, when someone proposes to walk the same road again. It
outlives the decision it justifies.

Deliverable

What is produced for someone: an article, a framing note, a specification, a presentation, a
decision.

It carries the result, not the reasoning that produced it. An answer that fits in a
spreadsheet cell says nothing of where it came from, what it cost, or what it passes over in
silence — and six months later that is what is missing.

Several deliverables can come from the same knowledge without the analysis being redone: each
composes with the notes according to its own need and its own audience.

Directives

The rules specific to a mission: what is expected of tone, format and method, and what is
ruled out.

They live in the frame, next to the mission, and rarely change — altering them would
transform how every source, every task and every result is judged.

Document source

An outside document, entered frozen: an email, an article, a book, a web page, the transcript
of an interview.

It arrives as a finished object and stays as it is. Whatever can be drawn from it comes
afterwards, and elsewhere.

Entity

A Context devoted to a piece of the product that runs in production and has its own rules.

What it holds is established, and it does not close: the product goes on existing. It is what
receives whatever an exploration has settled on the day it goes live.

Frame

The zone that answers "why am I here, and under what rules?": the mission, the directives,
and what will be read on opening.

It rarely changes, and for good reason: altering the mission would transform how every
source, every task and every result is judged.

Glossary (of a Context)

The meaning a word is given inside a mission.

Part of any disagreement comes from vocabulary: two people, or two notes, use the same word
for different things. A glossary entry fixes the local meaning, says what not to confuse it
with, and gives examples.

That definition is not meant to become universal. It holds here, for this work.

History

The factual, dated trace of what happened.

It does not tell the session nicely: it keeps the useful facts — a source added, a line of
enquiry dropped, a decision taken, a note created. It is rarely consulted, and becomes
decisive the day the present state looks incoherent.

Hypothesis

A Context devoted to an idea being looked into about an entity, without knowing yet where
it leads.

Nothing it holds is established, and that is precisely why it lives apart from what is
stable: without that separation, every abandoned supposition would leave its traces in the
description of the product, and nobody would dare suppose anything in a place where
everything is meant to be true.

A hypothesis always ends by leaving active work — poured into its entity, or archived with
whatever stopped it. One that does neither is a study that concluded nothing.

Ingestion

The operation that reads a source and draws notes from it.

It does not produce a summary of the document: it looks for ideas strong enough to be
understood, discussed and reused independently of it. One and the same operation creates the
atomic notes, brings them together, and may make a thematic note appear.

Adding is not understanding: an ingestion log distinguishes what is present from what has
really been taken in, which stops a document merely dropped in a folder from being treated as
known.

Ingestion coverage

What shows which sources really contributed to the notes.

It stops a document merely present in the folder from counting as taken in. A file that has
been filed proves the material is available, not that it has been understood.

Letterbox

The file where an idea that comes outside a session is dropped — on a train, in the middle of
a meeting, with no network.

It is not a note: it waits. At the next opening it is reread, brought alongside the work in
progress, then taken in where it belongs. It may become a task, an interview question, a
note — or disappear if it is no longer relevant.

LLM Wiki

A shared library where thousands of notes drawn from books, articles and standards are
already structured.

It stores on a large scale, but it does not reason: it does not say why a piece of knowledge
matters in the work being done today, nor what was made of it, nor what was decided against.

Each pays the price of its strength: the wiki gains scale and loses the thread, the Context
keeps the thread and gives up scale. That is why they should talk to each other rather than
merge.

Mission

The aim of a Context, the question it looks into, and the limits it sets itself.

It is what makes refusing material possible. To set a document aside you have to be able to
say "this does not help me" — so you have to be looking for something. A Context carrying a
label rather than a question takes in anything touching its subject, and becomes the
catch-all folder you were trying to avoid.

Picking the work back up

Recovering the logic of the work before carrying out the next action.

To be distinguished from moving forward, which means only knowing what that action is. A task
list says a source must be handled; it does not explain why it is a priority, which part of
the work it should shed light on, or which risk it should let you correct.

Picking the work back up calls for something richer: the aim being pursued, where the work
actually got to, the decisions that still steer what follows, the fragilities not to be
forgotten, and a next action precise enough to start again.

Problem

A Context devoted to a question that cuts across several entities and gives rise to
hypotheses.

It is not a feature, and it is not a big subject either: it is a question. A space carrying a
label rather than a question takes in anything touching its domain, and becomes the catch-all
folder you were trying to avoid.

Propose

The third gesture between two Contexts, after reading and absorbing.

An exploration proposes what it has learnt; the owner of the target Context decides what
comes in. It is never a piece of writing at the neighbour's: the decision belongs to whoever
receives it.

RAG

Search by meaning.

It finds the notes whose sense comes close to a question asked in your own words, without
requiring the vocabulary used when they were written. A note may speak of initial friction,
of activation or of time-to-value without ever using the word you are looking for. RAG finds
what you would not have known how to name.

Reading (at another Context)

Consulting a piece of knowledge that stays with its owner and goes on evolving there.

The link is live: what you read can change without your knowing. That is often what you want —
a rule that evolves where it is owned is the system working. The risk is not knowing it
moved.

Reading does not grant writing. A Context you read a great deal ends up looking like a
Context you own a little, and that is where the rule reasserts itself: what you have to tell
the neighbour is a proposal, and the decision belongs to whoever receives it.

Reliability

What can be done with a source, stated when it comes in.

This level does not judge the source or rank it by merit. It says how to use it: single
account, verified figure, contractual document, hypothesis to confirm.

Resumability

A Context's capacity to be picked back up at any time.

An interruption does not pick its moment: a meeting starts, the battery runs down, something
urgent takes the subject's place. The moment such a memory is most useful is exactly the one
where the ending was not prepared.

So it is maintained during the work, not when closing it: decisions find their place when
they are taken, tasks when they are formulated, sources when they come in. Picking the work
back up becomes a property of the system rather than a heroic discipline of the user.

Semantic graph

The relations already laid between notes, which let you move from a result to its
neighbourhood.

A neighbouring note might never have answered the question directly. It becomes valuable
because it shows under what conditions the idea applies, or where it stops being true. The
graph brings out what you would not have thought to look for.

Session source

What gets formulated during the work with the AI: an explanation, a correction, a
distinction, a conviction drawn from experience.

It does not arrive all at once, it builds up as the exchange goes on. Nor does it become an
established fact: it keeps its origin and can be set against other sources. What the human
says and what the AI says stay apart, so that an intention can be told from a proposal made
by the system.

Skill

A procedure the Context knows how to carry out: adding a source, ingesting it, saving,
checking.

It describes a gesture, not a content. It is what lets you talk to the Context without
knowing how its files are organised.

Source

What has come in or been said, kept as it is.

It remains the evidence; the knowledge lives in the notes it produces. A document and its
usable text are therefore kept apart from what the Context will make of them, and a record
says where it came from, why it was added, whether extraction succeeded, and how far it can
be trusted.

State

What the Context knows about itself today: the findings, the uncertainties, the debts.

It makes it possible to tell a finding from a hypothesis, a future action from a decision
already taken, a passing difficulty from a contradiction that deserves to stay visible.

It is rewritten at each consolidation. The synthesis, by contrast, only grows: the state says
where things stand, the synthesis says what is settled for good.

Synthesis

What has become lasting and is no longer discussed.

It only grows, where the state is rewritten at each consolidation. The state says where
things stand today; the synthesis says what is settled for good.

Thematic note

A reading of the relations between several atomic notes.

It appears when several ideas form a whole that cannot be reduced to a single proposition. It
does not juxtapose summaries and does not merge its bricks: it offers an angle, says what
they let you understand together, and shows what stays open — including the tension each
deliverable will have to handle differently.

Todo

The actions to be carried out.

It keeps what has to be done even when an interruption pulls you off the thread — and that is
precisely its use, since an interruption gives no warning.

Traceability

Being able to go back from every idea to the evidence that supports it.

Every note keeps the link to its sources, and the links are named: a source that confirms is
told from one that qualifies and one that contradicts. A level of confidence makes visible
what rests on several observations and what remains hypothetical.

Without it, a note that is right floats a year later with no one knowing what it rests on —
and that is precisely the state everything else is trying to prevent.

World of ideas

The whole formed by the notes and the glossary: bricks of knowledge that are no longer raw
material and not yet a result meant for someone.

A note belongs to it as long as it seeks to settle a piece of knowledge rather than produce
an effect on an audience. So it must not become, too early, an article's opening line, a
slide or a piece of a specification.

That neutrality does not make it vague: its title asserts a precise proposition, its content
sets out the qualifications, its links let the foundations be checked. What stays neutral is
its form — it is not organised to serve a single result.

It is the Context's reusable capital: stable enough to be found again, independent enough to
be recombined.