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digital-garden-cultivator

Productivity
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Manages digital garden notes, link structures, and health metrics. Use when curating a knowledge base, pruning stale notes, or tracking content maturity.

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How to use this skill

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Source SKILL.md: https://github.com/athola/claude-night-market/blob/HEAD/plugins/memory-palace/skills/digital-garden-cultivator/SKILL.md

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Table of Contents

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

LevelStatusDescription
SeedlingNew/roughEarly ideas, incomplete thoughts
GrowingDevelopingBeing actively refined
EvergreenMatureStable, well-developed content

Core Workflow

  1. Collect Sources - Gather notes, bookmarks, ideas
  2. Plan Structure - Define garden organization
  3. Create Links - Build bidirectional connections
  4. Schedule Maintenance - Establish tending cadence
  5. 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

ActionFrequencyPurpose
Quick pruneEvery 2 daysRemove dead links, fix typos
Stale reviewAfter 7 days inactiveAssess content freshness
ArchiveAfter 30 days inactiveMove 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

Exit Criteria

  • scripts/garden_metrics.py runs without error on the target garden.json and outputs link density, bidirectional coverage, freshness, and maturity ratio
  • Stale notes (inactive for more than 7 days) are identified and surfaced for the user's review
  • Each note in scope has a maturity level assigned as one of: seedling, growing, or evergreen
  • Dead links and orphaned notes are reported so they can be pruned or reconnected during the maintenance pass
  • If garden.json is absent or malformed, the error is reported with the path that was searched rather than silently completing