persona-garden-patch

Citation Form

Core question: “What do I need to know about this source?”

A structured dossier on a single work: metadata, abstract, analysis, insights, connections to other works, bibliography, and archived source material. A compound object containing glosses, extracted principles, and typed relations to other citations. Append-only; new insights accumulate but analysis isn’t rewritten.

Naming Convention

Citations follow the pattern Author (Year) Abbreviated Title, with an optional venue suffix , in/from Publication when venue adds important context:

The citation_slug: frontmatter field provides a short cross-referencing key (e.g., roy-2026-words-without-consequence).

Structural Contract

A citation lead file has 7 required sections:

  1. Bibliographic Entry — Full inline citation: bold-italic title, year, [type], italic author(s), publication details, URL.
  2. Summary — ~75 words. What the work covers and why it matters. Practitioner voice.
  3. Key Points — Analytical summaries in our voice (not quotes). Bold subheading per point. 7-10 points for Growing/Evergreen; fewer acceptable at Seed.
  4. Key Quotes — Verbatim quotes with section/page reference. 2-5 minimum.
  5. Influence — Impact on field and methodology/significance. ~60-80 words.
  6. Sources — Where this node’s content comes from (the work itself, secondary sources consulted).
  7. Relations — Typed predicate links to other garden nodes.

Frontmatter includes citation_slug: and publication_year: alongside standard fields.

Compound Structure

Citations graduate from atomic (single file) to compound when analysis deepens:

Author (Year) Abbreviated Title/
├─ Author (Year) Abbreviated Title.md              ← lead file
├─ Author (Year) Abbreviated Title — Analysis.md   ← primary source analysis
├─ Author (Year) Abbreviated Title — Insights.md   ← extraction candidates
├─ Author (Year) Abbreviated Title — Salience.md   ← context-specific relevance bridges
├─ Renditions/
│  └─ source-title.md                              ← markdown copy of source
└─ Archives/
   └─ citation-slug.pdf                            ← original binary

Sub-files use the lead file’s full name with an em-dash suffix ( — Analysis.md, ` — Insights.md, — Salience.md`). This makes all analytical depth wikilink-accessible and visible in Obsidian’s graph — garden content is synpraxis (collaborative knowledge) and must be findable. See [[Proper Obsidian Names for Garden Compound Sub-Files]]↑ for the full decision.

Sidecar files (.sidecar.md) remain invisible by design — metadata envelopes, not knowledge nodes.

Sub-file roles

Sub-file Role Growth pattern
Analysis Analytical breakdown: named patterns, second-order analysis, structural insights about the source Written once per source, may be supplemented
Insights Extraction candidates: each tagged with target garden form type, inference level, ghost links Append-only as new extraction targets emerge
Salience Context-specific relevance bridges: compressed arguments for why this citation matters to specific lenses, articles, or arguments. Each entry is a bridge connecting the citation to a specific audience Append-only as the citation serves new contexts

When both primary and secondary analysis exist, use — Analysis (Primary).md and — Analysis (Secondary).md.

Typical Predicates

Exemplars

Category

Structural form — captures how things relate and what we understand.

Sources

Definition from [[Deep Context as an Architecture for Captured Reasoning]], lines 68-69.

Citation Form vs. Opus Form

Citation Form and [[Opus Form]] share compound structure (Analysis, Insights, Salience sub-files, Renditions/, Archives/) and the em-dash suffix naming convention, but serve opposite relationships to the work:

Both forms share the principal-agent attribution framework (see [[Role-Specific Attribution Predicates for Opus Form]]↑) but apply it differently: Citation uses cites_work_by:: (third-person attribution); Opus uses authored_by:: and principal:: (first-person attribution).

Relations