Digital Garden Cultivator Skill

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

Agent Skills: Digital Garden Cultivator

Install this agent skill to your local

Skill Files

Table of Contents