idea-distillery

Imported from FixingPixels/idea-distillery (AGENTS.md). Install upstream with npx skills add FixingPixels/idea-distillery. Copyright stays with the author.

idea-distillery — Knowledge Base Schema

Purpose

This is a personal idea vault for capturing, connecting, and compounding brainstorming sessions over time. The LLM writes and maintains all files under wiki/. The human brainstorms freely in conversation and directs queries. The human never edits wiki files directly.

The vault follows Andrej Karpathy's LLM Wiki concept: raw sources are immutable session logs, the wiki is the LLM-maintained knowledge layer that structures, cross-links, and synthesizes across them. Over time the wiki becomes a second brain for ideas — surfacing patterns, tracking idea evolution, and making prior sessions useful in future ones.

New here? This vault ships with a small, clearly-marked worked example (files with example: true in their frontmatter, and one example session in raw/). Delete them before your first real session — see the README's "Start clean" section.

Directory Layout

• raw/ — Immutable brainstorm session logs written by the brainstorm-synthesis skill. Never modify these.
• _inbox/ — Staging zone for raw, unprocessed captures (phone dumps, quick notes, voice memos). Separate from raw/. Edit or delete freely until promoted.
• wiki/index.md — Master catalog. Every wiki page must appear here.
• wiki/log.md — Append-only activity log.
• wiki/summaries/ — One Idea Register per brainstorm session (structured output from the raw log).
• wiki/ideas/ — One page per distinct idea. First-class directory. Ideas persist and evolve across sessions.
• wiki/themes/ — Recurring problem spaces, domains, and topics that appear across multiple sessions.
• wiki/patterns/ — Cross-session insights about thinking tendencies: recurring strengths, blind spots, and instincts.
• wiki/journal/ — Weekly or periodic reflection entries synthesizing recent activity.
• wiki/presentations/ — Marp slide decks generated from wiki content.
• references/ — LLM-maintained coaching files applied as active in-session constraints. brainstorm-coach.md governs live ideation; writing-coach.md governs drafting prose. Both start empty and regenerate as evidence accumulates.
• skills/brainstorm-synthesis/ — The skill that runs the Brainstorm Session workflow. Install it into your tool's skills location (see README).

Each wiki/<type>/_template.md file is the page format for that type. Templates are scaffolding, not real pages — they are exempt from the index/linking rules below.

File Naming

• All lowercase, hyphens for word separation: financial-therapy-platform.md, session-2026-04-13.md
• No spaces, no special characters, no uppercase
• Name should match the page title slug

Page Format

Every wiki page uses this frontmatter and structure:

---
title: "Page Title"
type: summary | idea | theme | pattern | journal
tags: [tag1, tag2, tag3]
created: YYYY-MM-DD
updated: YYYY-MM-DD
sources: ["raw/brainstorm-YYYY-MM-DD.md"]
confidence: high | medium | low
---

Required Sections by Page Type

Summary pages (wiki/summaries/):

One per brainstorm session. This is the structured Idea Register — the primary output of the brainstorm-synthesis skill.

• ## Session Overview — Date, number of ideas, top idea, one-sentence characterization of the session's theme
• ## Ideas — All ideas from the session with status, lenses, viability scores, and key insight (per register template)
• ## Patterns — Recurring weaknesses, recurring strengths, thematic through-line, most promising idea, most interesting discard, unasked question
• ## Next Steps — Downstream skill handoffs or follow-on actions
• ## Source Metadata — Link to raw/ log file, session date

Idea pages (wiki/ideas/):

One per distinct idea. Ideas outlive individual sessions — this page is updated whenever an idea resurfaces or evolves.

• ## Concept — What this idea is: problem it solves, target audience, core value proposition. Plain English, no hype.
• ## History — Chronological log of sessions in which this idea appeared. Note status at each appearance and any pivots.
• ## Viability Assessment — Current best scores on Desirability / Feasibility / Distinctiveness, with brief rationale. Update each session.
• ## Strengths — What's genuinely working about this idea.
• ## Open Questions — Unresolved questions that would most change the picture. The most important question goes first.
• ## Related Ideas — Wiki links to ideas this one competes with, complements, or evolved from.
• ## Related Themes — Wiki links to the themes this idea belongs to.
• ## Status — active | parked | discarded | evolved (note what it evolved into)

Theme pages (wiki/themes/):

One per recurring problem space, domain, or topic that appears across sessions.

• ## Overview — What this theme is and why it keeps coming up.
• ## Ideas in This Theme — Wiki links to all ideas that belong here.
• ## Patterns Observed — What the ideas in this theme tend to get right or wrong. Updated over time.
• ## Open Questions — Unresolved questions about this space.
• ## Sources — Which sessions surfaced this theme.

Pattern pages (wiki/patterns/):

Cross-session insights about how this person thinks. These are meta-level observations, not ideas themselves.

• ## Observation — What the pattern is, stated plainly. One paragraph.
• ## Evidence — Specific ideas or sessions that support this pattern. At least two data points before creating a page.
• ## Implication — What this pattern means for how to brainstorm better or evaluate ideas differently.
• ## Sessions — Which raw sessions this pattern was observed in.

Journal pages (wiki/journal/):

Weekly or periodic reflections synthesizing recent activity.

• ## Period — Date range covered.
• ## Sessions This Period — Links to raw logs and summaries.
• ## Ideas That Evolved — Any status changes or pivots.
• ## Patterns Emerging — New or strengthening meta-observations.
• ## Open Questions — Anything unresolved worth carrying forward.
• ## Next Session Focus — What to explore or pressure-test next.

Linking Conventions

• Use Obsidian-style wiki links: [[ideas/financial-therapy-platform]]
• Always use relative paths from the wiki/ root
• Every page must link to at least one other page — no orphans
• Idea pages must link to their theme(s) and related ideas
• Summary pages must link to every idea page mentioned in that session
• Pattern pages must link to the sessions and ideas that are their evidence base

Tagging Taxonomy

Status — current state of an idea

• active, parked, discarded, evolved

Domain — the problem space or industry

• saas, creator-economy, ai, fintech, health, education, productivity, consumer, b2b, media

Lens — evaluation angle (from brainstorm-synthesis skill)

• feasibility, audience, market-gap, timing, differentiation, compounding, monetization, risk, hidden-strength

Session — which raw session(s) this page references

• session-YYYY-MM-DD

Type

• idea, theme, pattern, summary, journal

Confidence Levels

• high — Well-established: appeared multiple sessions, has evidence, withstood pushback
• medium — Plausible and discussed, but not yet tested or revisited
• low — Single mention, assumption, or speculative; needs more sessions before acting on it

Brainstorming Behavior

At the start of any live brainstorming session — when the user is actively generating and exploring ideas, before any synthesis — read references/brainstorm-coach.md and apply its rules as active in-session constraints:

• Raise Interrupt gates before the session passes the point where the discipline would have mattered (e.g., surface the demand falsification question before elaborating architecture, not after)
• Name Reinforce cues when the corresponding strength fires, and push one layer further with the prescribed question
• If references/brainstorm-coach.md is still empty (no patterns yet), proceed normally — the file populates as your sessions accumulate evidence

Writing Behavior

Before drafting any article, essay, blog post, or other external-facing prose — and during revision — read references/writing-coach.md and apply its gates as active drafting constraints:

• Raise Interrupt gates while drafting, before the bad sentence ships, not as a cleanup pass afterward. Gate 1 (Scene Before Fact) is highest priority because it is an accuracy failure: verify the factual premise under any vivid opening or world-claim before committing it.
• Run the mechanical lint (the "not X, but Y" relapse) on every revision pass.
• After a substantial writing session, update references/writing-coach.md: add any correction that has recurred across ≥2 drafts, promote a watched strength that reappeared, and adjust confidence as patterns survive across sessions. This mirrors the self-regenerating loop of the brainstorm coach.
• If references/writing-coach.md is still empty, proceed normally — the file populates as your drafting sessions accumulate evidence.

Workflows

Brainstorm Session (primary workflow)

Triggered automatically by the brainstorm-synthesis skill at the end of a session. The skill:

1. Saves the session log to raw/brainstorm-YYYY-MM-DD.md
2. Creates wiki/summaries/brainstorm-YYYY-MM-DD.md with the full Idea Register
3. For each active or parked idea: create wiki/ideas/<idea-slug>.md if it doesn't exist, or update the existing page with new session history and revised viability assessment
4. For each idea: identify its theme(s), creating wiki/themes/<theme-slug>.md if needed
5. Add cross-links in both directions: summary ↔ ideas ↔ themes
6. Update wiki/index.md — add new entries, update summaries of changed pages
7. Append to wiki/log.md with timestamp, session date, and pages created/updated
8. If a pattern is observed that already has a page, update its evidence; if a new pattern emerges across ≥2 data points, create wiki/patterns/<pattern-slug>.md

Ingest

When the user says "ingest [file]" or points to a file in raw/:

1. Read the raw source completely
2. Run the Brainstorm Session workflow above against it
3. Flag any contradictions with existing idea pages (e.g., an idea previously discarded is now active)

Capture Inbox (promotion)

_inbox/ is the staging zone for raw, unprocessed captures — phone dumps, quick notes, voice memos. It is separate from raw/, which is immutable and dated. To promote an inbox item:

1. Read the capture in _inbox/ completely
2. Write an immutable log to raw/brainstorm-YYYY-MM-DD.md (use the capture date; append a short slug if multiple captures share a date: raw/brainstorm-YYYY-MM-DD-<slug>.md)
3. Run the Brainstorm Session workflow above against the new raw log
4. Delete the original item from _inbox/ once it is safely promoted

Inbox items are unprocessed until promoted — edit or delete them freely while staged. The Weekly Review flags any that have been sitting unprocessed.

Query

When the user asks a question about ideas, themes, or patterns:

1. Read wiki/index.md to find relevant pages
2. Read those pages
3. Synthesize an answer citing specific pages with wiki links
4. If the answer surfaces a new insight worth preserving, create a synthesis entry or update an existing pattern page

Weekly Review

When the user says "weekly review" or "what's the state of my ideas":

1. Read wiki/log.md to identify sessions and changes this week
2. Read all active idea pages
3. Read all pattern pages
4. Create a journal entry in wiki/journal/YYYY-MM-DD.md covering: sessions this period, ideas that evolved, patterns emerging, open questions, next session focus
5. Flag any _inbox/ items that have been sitting unprocessed
6. Update wiki/index.md and wiki/log.md

Lint

When the user says "lint" or "health check":

1. Read all wiki pages
2. Check for: orphan pages (no inbound links), idea pages missing required sections, ideas without theme links, pattern pages with only one data point (insufficient evidence), stale open questions (≥3 sessions old and unchanged), ideas listed as active that haven't appeared in ≥4 sessions
3. Fix what can be fixed automatically (add missing cross-links, update dates)
4. Report issues that need human judgment (e.g., should this idea be downgraded to parked?)
5. Suggest missing theme or pattern pages implied by existing content
6. Update wiki/log.md

Rules

• Never modify files in raw/
• Always update wiki/index.md and wiki/log.md after any wiki change
• Every active idea must have a wiki/ideas/ page — no ideas live only in summaries
• Prefer updating existing pages over creating duplicates; if a page grows beyond ~500 lines, split it
• Pattern pages require at least two sessions as evidence before creation — one data point is noise
• When a source provides specific viability scores or key insights, preserve the exact language — vague summaries are less useful than precise ones
• Use plain English; no startup jargon without definition
• All dates in ISO 8601 format: YYYY-MM-DD
• When in doubt about a claim, set confidence to low and note the uncertainty explicitly
• Ideas should be named by their concept, not by a cute brand name, unless the brand name was explicitly chosen — this keeps the index legible