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.

1. Plan: It scans the vault and creates a Gardener Plan.
2. Review: You (the human) review the plan.
3. 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.

This creates a positive feedback loop: the improved structure makes future suggestions more accurate.