athola/digital-garden-cultivator

Table of Contents

• What It Is
• Quick Start
• Calculate Garden Metrics
• Output Formats
• When to Use
• Content Maturity Levels
• Core Workflow
• Garden Layout Template
• Maintenance Cadence
• Success Metrics
• Detailed Resources
• Integration

Digital Garden Cultivator

Design, manage, and evolve digital gardens as living knowledge bases. Digital gardens are interconnected note collections that grow organically, emphasizing evolution over perfection.

What It Is

A digital garden approach to knowledge management that:

• Builds dynamic knowledge bases that evolve over time
• Connects notes through bidirectional links
• Incubates ideas before formalizing as documentation
• Creates discovery paths for information navigation
• Tracks content maturity and maintenance needs

Quick Start

Calculate Garden Metrics

python scripts/garden_metrics.py path/to/garden.json --format brief

Verification: Run python --version to verify Python environment.

Output Formats

• json - Full metrics as JSON
• brief - One-line summary
• prometheus - Prometheus exposition format

When To Use

• Building dynamic knowledge bases that evolve over time
• Connecting notes, skills, and palaces through bidirectional links
• Incubating ideas before formalizing as documentation
• Creating discovery paths for navigating information
• Managing content lifecycle (seedling → growing → evergreen)

When NOT To Use

• Creating memory palace structures - use memory-palace-architect
• Evaluating new knowledge
  • use knowledge-intake
• Creating memory palace structures - use memory-palace-architect
• Evaluating new knowledge
  • use knowledge-intake

Content Maturity Levels

| Level | Status | Description | |-------|--------|-------------| | Seedling | New/rough | Early ideas, incomplete thoughts | | Growing | Developing | Being actively refined | | Evergreen | Mature | Stable, well-developed content |

Core Workflow

1. Collect Sources - Gather notes, bookmarks, ideas
2. Plan Structure - Define garden organization
3. Create Links - Build bidirectional connections
4. Schedule Maintenance - Establish tending cadence
5. Document Outputs - Convert mature ideas to formal docs

Garden Layout Template

garden:
  sections: ["research", "patterns", "experiments"]
  plots:
    - name: "My First Note"
      purpose: "reference"  # reference | evergreen | lab
      maturity: "seedling"  # seedling | growing | evergreen
      inbound_links: []
      outbound_links: []
      last_tended: "2025-11-24T10:00:00Z"

Verification: Run the command with --help flag to verify availability.

Maintenance Cadence

| Action | Frequency | Purpose | |--------|-----------|---------| | Quick prune | Every 2 days | Remove dead links, fix typos | | Stale review | After 7 days inactive | Assess content freshness | | Archive | After 30 days inactive | Move to archive or delete |

Success Metrics

• Link density - Average links per piece of content
• Bidirectional coverage - % of links that are reciprocal
• Freshness - Time since last update per area
• Maturity ratio - Evergreen content / total content

Detailed Resources

• Linking Patterns: See modules/linking-patterns.md
• Maintenance Guide: See modules/maintenance.md
• Metrics Integration: See modules/maintenance.md

Integration

• memory-palace-architect - Host garden within palace structure
• knowledge-locator - Search garden content
• session-palace-builder - Seed garden from session insights

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

Pre-commit hooks failing Run SKIP=... git commit to bypass temporarily, then fix issues

Merge conflicts Use git merge --abort to reset, then resolve conflicts carefully

Commit rejected Check hook output and fix reported issues before committing again

Exit Criteria

• [ ] scripts/garden_metrics.py runs without error on the target garden.json and outputs link density, bidirectional coverage, freshness, and maturity ratio
• [ ] Stale notes (inactive for more than 7 days) are identified and surfaced for the user's review
• [ ] Each note in scope has a maturity level assigned as one of: seedling, growing, or evergreen
• [ ] Dead links and orphaned notes are reported so they can be pruned or reconnected during the maintenance pass
• [ ] If garden.json is absent or malformed, the error is reported with the path that was searched rather than silently completing