Atomic note convention overhaul — claim-as-API titles, free-prose body

Context and Problem Statement

The previous atomic-note convention required a six-header template (Core Principle / Why This Matters / Evidence/Examples / Implications / Related Ideas / Questions) and zettel as the first tag. In practice this forced premature articulation onto early-stage thoughts (notes felt verbose and artificially atomic), duplicated the type signal already encoded by folder location, and diverged from the modern post-Luhmann consensus.

Primary sources for the rewrite:

• Matuschak — titles as APIs and complete-phrase claims.
• Doto, A System for Writing (2024) — “title should be a declarative statement, not a descriptor.”
• Anthropic — Effective Context Engineering for AI Agents — “examples are pictures worth a thousand words”; right-altitude principle (avoid rigid rules AND vague guidance).

Considered Options

• New convention: claim-as-API titles, free-prose body, drop type-tag, seedlings in Inbox/, single Nix-sourced template.
• Keep the six-header template.
• Pure Luhmann (untitled or topic keywords).
• Add a seedling status to keep half-formed notes in Atlas/Notes/.

Decision Outcome

Chosen option: “New convention: claim-as-API titles, free-prose body, drop type-tag”, because the two failure modes — verbose body, artificially atomic notes — both trace to the template demanding more distillation than early-stage thoughts have done.

Three convergent fixes:

1. Push discipline into the title (claim-as-API forces clarity at the right moment).
2. Move half-formed thoughts out of Atlas/Notes/ entirely (Inbox/ is for fleeting; promotion is the sharpening act).
3. Remove section scaffolding so brevity is the default.

Convention details (full spec in vault README.md § “Atomic note convention”):

• Title: claim-as-API. Declarative claim or precise noun-phrase concept-name. Topic titles forbidden (route to MOCs).
• Lifecycle: seedlings in Inbox/, evergreen in Atlas/Notes/. No status property — location is the state.
• Frontmatter: date (promotion date) + optional tags (0-3 categorical themes; no type-tag).
• Body: free prose, no required headers. 50-250 words by default.
• Tags: 0-3 categorical themes; concepts go in wikilinks, not tags.
• Template: single Nix source at nix/home-manager/files/obsidian/templates/note-template.md, deployed to vault and skill assets via the programs.obsidianVault.templates option (producer/consumer pattern).
• MOCs: unchanged — continue with topic-style titles (Milo).

Consequences

• Good, because brevity is the default; LLM-generated bodies have anti-patterns to violate or refuse.
• Good, because Nix-managed single source eliminates drift between user-facing template and agent-side skill reference.
• Bad, because existing notes following the old convention will need migration over time (not backfilled mechanically; rewrite as touched).

Pros and Cons of the Options

New convention

• Good, see Decision Outcome above.

Keep the six-header template

• Bad, because forces premature articulation; no major author prescribes it.

Pure Luhmann

• Bad, because digital systems navigate by full-text search and wikilinks, which need claim-shaped titles to compose well.

Add seedling status

• Bad, because dilutes the evergreen-folder semantic; cleaner separation by location.