The slipbox keeps semantic note types, but it does not need a separate template for every type. All notes share the same frontmatter schema, and every note is a flat .md file in the root. The type field describes what the note is; the Obsidian template only supplies a useful starting shape.

Four flexible templates cover the vault:

• note.md for claims, questions, ideas, essays, and reflections
• item.md for people, companies, places, projects, products, tools, and institutions
• source.md for papers, books, articles, lectures, videos, podcasts, and conversations
• collection.md for hubs, indexes, notebooks, reading lists, and topic collections

For example, a person and a company are both item notes. They use the same template and factual body shape even if their type values differ. Add a new semantic type when it helps retrieval; add a new template only when a genuinely new body shape is needed.

All notes move through four stages: rough, growing, evergreen, abandoned.

• Working notes in Scratchpad

• Evergreen notes

  • the central form, one claim per note
  • title: complete declarative sentence ("Memory is the load-bearing constraint of self-directed learning"), imperative ("Write notes for yourself by default"), or noun phrase for terms of art ("Gaussian integral")
  • body: 2-5 paragraphs, first sentence restates title at one degree higher specificity, no preamble
  • links: one outbound per 25-50 words of body, external links in ## Bibliography only
  • optional: Q. / A. spaced-repetition pairs, bullet lists of related claims, block quotes in bibliography
  • use when: you have a single idea you can explain without mentioning the source

• Idea note

  • freeform working note for material that is not yet (and may never be) a single claim
  • title: project name or noun phrase ("Agentic Port Of Sophia to Rust", "caveman-adhd combined skill")
  • body: whatever shape the idea needs — long specs, prompt writeups, checklists, multi-section dumps, evolving designs
  • no 2-5 paragraph rule, no one-claim rule; headings and unfinished sections are fine
  • lifecycle: extract crystallised claims into evergreens; abandon when dead; keep as idea while it is still a living multi-claim design
  • use when: AI prompt writeups, long-term project specs, multi-primitive system designs, anything too large or too fluid for an evergreen

• Proper noun notes (weakly evergreen, accumulate facts rather than develop arguments)

  • Paper note (literature note)

    • one note per academic work, the book gets shredded, the claims survive
    • title: full academic citation ("Ramanujan, S. (1914). Modular Equations and Approximations to pi")
    • body: bullet hierarchy only, no prose paragraphs
      • first line: full citation with DOI/URL
      • each top-level bullet is a claim, phrased as a forward link to an evergreen
      • sub-bullets: qualifications, sub-claims, follow-on links
    • use when: processing a paper, textbook chapter, or formal published source

  • Person note

    • a hub for a single human being, exists primarily to be linked to
    • title: the name, nothing else ("Richard Feynman", not "Notes on Feynman")
    • body: bullet list of biographical facts and pointers, 5-20 lines
      • affiliation, training, current role, distinctive concepts
      • external links (site, Wikipedia, IMDB) inline in bullets
      • quotes in blockquote form, attributed inline
      • no paragraphs of prose
    • if it gets long, refactor bullets into evergreen notes about the person's ideas
    • use when: a person appears across 3+ evergreen notes and needs a hub

  • Company note (institution note)

    • a hub for an organization, factual rather than argumentative
    • title: the organization's preferred name ("Bell Labs", "Anthropic"), no tagline
    • body: bullet list
      • founding, mission, key people, key outputs
      • bullets dated where possible ([[YYYY-MM-DD]]) to prevent silent rot
      • external links inline
      • one allowance for opinion: "Why X matters (dated)" section, explicitly dated and labeled
    • use when: an organization appears across 3+ notes and needs a factual anchor

• Question note

  • what an evergreen becomes when the claim has not crystallized
  • title: interrogative sentence ending in ? ("Why did Plan 9 fail to displace Unix?")
  • body:
    • opens with one-line rephrasing of the question or its stakes
    • enumerates positions as bullets, each linking to an evergreen that argues that position
    • hedged personal lean if one exists, labeled ("My current lean, weakly held:")
    • closes with the most useful unresolved sub-question, not a resolution
  • lifecycle: meant to be refactored into a declarative evergreen when evidence resolves
  • use when: enough evidence to name the positions but not enough to commit

• Letter note

  • dated, long, reflective, closest form to a blog post
  • title: ISO date prefix + topic phrase ("2026-05-23 Letter - On the shape of a corpus")
  • body: long-form prose, sub-headings, full paragraphs, first-person voice, 1,000-4,000 words
    • internal and external links coexist in body
    • closes with a sign-off ("Until next month, Kris")
  • use when: monthly reflection, plans, half-formed ideas, occasion-bound writing

• Lecture note

  • a note taken from a lecture, not an outline for giving one
  • two coupled forms:
    • master series note
      • title: prefixed with section- ("section-feynman-messenger-lectures-1964")
      • body: one-paragraph orientation, then numbered list of individual lectures as links
      • optional: cross-cutting notes section for claims that emerge across the series
    • individual lecture note
      • title: lecturer, series shorthand, number, topic, date ("feynman-messenger-1-law-of-gravitation-1964-11-09")
      • body: bullet hierarchy, lecturer's main moves in order
        • sub-bullets: examples, equations, asides
        • each claim worth extracting is a forward link to an evergreen stub
        • no running prose
      • optional: ← back to [[master-series-note]] link
  • use when: processing a lecture watched or attended, one note per lecture
  • master series note created when 2+ lectures from the same source exist

Non-types

• Scratchpad

  • not a note type, a daily capture surface for ephemeral thoughts
  • titled by date ("YYYY-MM-DD"), tagged type: scratchpad
  • filtered out at build time, never reaches production
  • ideas extracted into long-term places: films to watchlist, books to reading list, everything else into the appropriate type above
  • see Scratchpad

• Jottings (a state, not a type)

  • raw capture that has not yet become a note
  • has status: rough and whichever type it will become
  • process within 48 hours or delete
  • surviving longer than 48 hours is avoidance, not importance

• Index / Map of Content (a view, not a type)

  • curated link lists into topic clusters
  • created reactively when 5-10 notes cluster around a topic
  • type: evergreen whose content is a structured list of links
  • title is the topic ("Differential calculus")

Observations

• proper noun types (person, company, paper) are weakly evergreen: if you find yourself writing prose, it belongs in an evergreen note elsewhere
• dated types (letter, lecture) are not designed to survive their occasion
• only evergreen and question are argumentative; idea is constructive/speculative; the other five describe, record, list, or hub
• title style is the most reliable form-tell:
  • declarative sentence -> evergreen
  • project name / freeform noun phrase + multi-section body -> idea
  • citation string -> paper
  • bare name -> person
  • sentence ending in ? -> question
  • ISO date prefix -> letter
  • section- prefix -> lecture
  • organization name -> company

How to choose

1. single human being? -> person
2. organization? -> company
3. single published work? -> paper
4. lecture watched or attended? -> lecture
5. monthly update to audience? -> letter
6. question you cannot yet answer? -> question
7. claim you can state in one sharp sentence? -> evergreen
8. long-term spec, prompt writeup, or multi-claim design still in motion? -> idea
9. none of the above? -> write a sentence in your scratchpad and come back tomorrow