/digital-garden-cultivator

name: digital-garden-cultivator
description: Manages digital garden notes, link structures, and health metrics. Use when curating a knowledge base, pruning stale notes, or tracking content maturity.
alwaysApply: false
category: cultivation
tags:
- digital-garden
- knowledge-base
- linking
- curation
- documentation
dependencies:
- leyline:storage-templates
scripts:
- garden_metrics.py
usage_patterns:
- garden-management
- knowledge-curation
- content-lifecycle
complexity: intermediate
estimated_tokens: 500

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 -m memory_palace.garden_metrics path/to/garden.json --format brief

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

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"

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

Exit Criteria

• [ ] `python -m memory_palace.garden_metrics` 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