The Garden

The garden is where open questions grow. Not tasks. Not memory. Genuine inquiries that develop across sessions and resist immediate resolution.

Memory vs garden

Memory is retrieval. You ask "what did I say about X?" and memory returns the answer. Memory looks backward.

The garden is generative. You ask "what is X?" and water the question over time. The garden looks forward.

Memory answers questions. The garden grows them.

This is loci's differentiator. Every AI memory tool gives you retrieval. loci gives you a place for questions that cannot be answered in a single session: questions that need to grow.

What a plant looks like

A garden plant has:

• Name: a question or a hunch in compressed form, not a conclusion
• Seed thought: the opening question or provocation
• Waterings: dated entries added over time (observations, connections, new questions)
• Stage: how far it has grown (seed, sapling, plant, crystal-ready)

Plants live in one of two shipped formats. The single-file format keeps every plant in soul/garden.md, one block per plant (from templates/garden-template.md in the repo). The dedicated-file format gives each watering its own numbered file at soul/garden/[plant-name]-NNN.md (from templates/garden-file-template.md).

A plant in the single-file format, using the shape from templates/garden-template.md:

### Plant: [NAME]

*One sentence: why this matters to you*

**Seed thought:** *The opening question or provocation*

**Waterings:**
- 2026-02-15: Planted after noticing a pattern worth tracking.
- 2026-02-22: A new observation that shifts the framing.
- 2026-03-01: A connection to another plant or project.
- 2026-03-08: A counter-example that complicates the emerging picture.
- 2026-03-15: A possible principle starting to take shape.

The name is a question or a hunch in compressed form, not a conclusion. The seed thought is the provocation that started it. Each watering is dated, so the growth is visible across sessions.

The two formats

The single file is the overview: all plants, current state, quick to scan at a check-in.

Dedicated files are the deep record. One session, one watering, one file. The plant name is lowercase and hyphenated, the entry number zero-padded: [plant-name]-001.md, [plant-name]-002.md. Each file carries frontmatter (plant, entry, date, topic, watered-by, follows) and closes with three prompts (the seed from the last watering, today's observation, the next question) plus a one-line growth direction: converging, forking, dormant, or becoming-crystal.

Why numbered files? A git history per plant, no merge conflicts when several plants get watered in one session, and a readable timeline: the numbered sequence is the story. The two formats coexist. When a watering lands as a file, the plant's summary in soul/garden.md gets updated to match.

How to water a plant

Watering means engaging with a plant in a session: reading what was written before, adding a new thought or observation, asking a new question, making a connection to another plant or a project.

The watering protocol:

1. Read the seed thought: what was the original question?
2. Read prior waterings: what has been explored?
3. Add your watering: what is new? What shifted? What is the next question?
4. Date it, so the growth is visible.

Keep waterings concise: one or two paragraphs. Depth, not length. Do not dump every related thought into a plant. A plant with three sharp waterings beats one with thirty vague notes.

Garden rounds

A garden round is a structured session where the whole garden gets reviewed:

1. Read each plant's seed thought
2. Review the waterings since the last round
3. Add one watering to each active plant
4. Propose one or two new seeds
5. Note any plants that have grown into something bigger (a project, a principle, a crystal)

Rounds run on request, weekly if scheduled tasks are enabled, or after major sessions to consolidate what shifted.

Plant lifecycle

A plant's stage names how far it has grown: seed, sapling, plant, crystal-ready. The garden health pass reads the same arc as five states:

State	Meaning
🌱 Seeded	Exists, no waterings yet
🌿 Growing	Being actively watered
🍂 Dormant	No activity in three or more sessions. Not dead, resting.
💎 Crystallized	Graduated into a crystal
🌾 Composted	Retired, by your decision. Nutrients go to other plants.

Most plants compost. This is good. Not every question leads somewhere. Composting returns nutrients to the garden.

From plant to crystal

Sometimes a plant grows into something so solid that it becomes a crystal: a confirmed fact about how you work or think. When that happens:

1. Note the plant that seeded it
2. Move the insight to your crystals
3. Leave the plant in the garden with a note: "This grew into [crystal name]."

The plant stays. It is the history of the growth.

What growth looks like

Not every plant grows the same way. Some graduate quickly, some stay dormant for months and then produce something in a single session, most compost. A plant seeded as a narrow question ("why does this pattern keep showing up?") can grow through connections to unrelated projects and eventually crystallize into a fact that changes how you work. A plant can also grow sideways: forking into two more specific questions, each becoming its own plant. There is no fixed timeline. In the dedicated-file format, templates/garden-file-template.md tracks this with a one-line growth direction (converging, forking, dormant, or becoming-crystal) at the very bottom of the file, after the three closing prompts, not in the frontmatter.

Starting a garden

Your first garden is probably too ambitious. Start with one or two genuine questions: questions you actually think about, not questions you think you should think about.

Copy templates/garden-template.md from the repo to soul/garden.md and plant one or two seeds. Or give each plant its own numbered files with templates/garden-file-template.md. The repo's tutorials/grow-the-garden.md walks the whole flow.

WARNING

Do not confuse plants with tasks. "Finish the auth flow" is a task. "What makes auth feel trustworthy?" is a plant. Tasks get done. Plants get watered.

The health pass

The garden ships with a health check (templates/garden-health-template.md). Run it on demand ("run garden health"), or when the palace feels overgrown or has not been tended in a few sessions. It surfaces:

• Plants seeded but never watered: still relevant?
• Plants gone dormant: worth a watering, or ready to compost?
• Plants ready to graduate into crystals

It never deletes, never archives on its own, and never conflates "not recently used" with "no longer relevant". It proposes. You decide.

A garden with three growing plants beats one with thirty dormant ones. Water what matters.