Zettelkasten

Distinguish an author's claim and supporting evidence from your own interpretation within a source passage.

Paraphrase a source idea while preserving its scope and uncertainty, then verify the paraphrase against the original.

Write a durable note that expresses one self-contained idea as a complete claim.

Create a proposition-style note title that communicates the note's central claim.

Assign and justify a note's epistemic role as a sourced claim, inference, hypothesis, or open question.

Compare two candidate notes and state their specific relationship, rejecting a semantic link when they share only a topic.

Classify a meaningful relationship as support, contradiction, qualification, cause, example, application, or dependency.

Write a contextual link statement that explains how the destination note affects the claim or reasoning in the current note.

Decide whether a semantically valid relationship merits a direct link based on its expected use in retrieval, explanation, or synthesis.

Generate a follow-up research question from a contradiction, missing premise, unresolved dependency, or structural gap in the note network.

Decide whether a note cluster needs a Topic Index or Map of Content rather than a tag, folder, or saved search.

Create a question-centered Topic Index or MOC with an explicit purpose and clear inclusion and exclusion boundaries.

Arrange selected MOC entries into annotated groups that expose claims, evidence, counterevidence, and open questions.

Maintain an MOC by pruning low-utility entries and applying explicit criteria for keeping, splitting, merging, or archiving its structure.

Produce a concise, qualified synthesis that addresses the original research question and preserves traceability through notes to supporting sources.