This is the layer underneath everything else I build: one place where notes, projects, and the systems I reuse all live and link to each other. If a thought isn't written down here, it doesn't exist yet.

Three kinds of note

The vault only has three real shapes, and keeping it that simple is what makes it survive:

• Captures — raw, dated, unedited. The cost of writing one is near zero on purpose.
• Projects — the active work, each linking back to the captures that feed it.
• Systems — anything I've done more than twice, written once as a checklist or template so the next run is faster.

The compounding part

The value isn't any single note — it's the links. A capture from March becomes evidence in an April project, which hardens into a May system. Nothing is thrown away, so the graph gets more useful the longer it runs.

The vault is not an archive. It's the working memory of a one-person company.

What I kept out

Plenty. Elaborate tag taxonomies, daily-note rituals, plugins that promised structure and delivered friction. The system that survives is the one small enough to actually keep using.