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

• Collect Sources - Gather notes, bookmarks, ideas

• Plan Structure - Define garden organization

• Create Links - Build bidirectional connections

• Schedule Maintenance - Establish tending cadence

• 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