Vault Hygiene Philosophy
Why do vaults decay, and how does the Gardener fix it?
The problem: entropy
As a vault grows, it naturally tends toward chaos (entropy).
- We forget to add tags.
- We create duplicate concepts under different names (e.g.,
[[AI]]vs[[Artificial Intelligence]]). - We lose the "latent" connections between ideas.
This Vault Decay makes your knowledge harder to retrieve and reduces the value of your second brain over time.
Proactive vs reactive maintenance
Most users strictly do reactive maintenance: they fix a link only when they notice it is broken.
The Gardener inserts a layer of proactive maintenance.
- Plan: It scans the vault and creates a Gardener Plan.
- Review: You (the human) review the plan.
- Apply: The approved structural changes are applied in bulk.
The ontology plan
The Gardener does not guess; it follows your ontology. It looks at where you have stored previous concepts to determine where new ones belong.
- If you put all companies in
Entities/Companies, it will suggest moving new company notes there. - If you tag people with #person, it will suggest that tag for new contacts.
Privacy and safety
The Gardener works extensively with your vault's structure, but it never modifies your files without explicit consent. Every action it proposes is held in a "Gardening Plan" for your review.
This "Human-in-the-Loop" model is a core pillar of our security architecture. For a deep dive into how we protect your vault from unintended modifications and external threats, see our Security and Robustness Standards.