| name | memory/capture-discipline |
| description | Use when designing daily capture, note-taking, or personal-knowledge operations — defines the discipline of when, what, and where to capture. Tool-agnostic; the practice survives tool changes. Default skill for Starlight Second Brain. |
| type | personal-life-os |
Capture Discipline
"Lower friction beats higher structure. Every time."
When This Skill Activates
- Any capture, note-taking, or personal-knowledge operation
- Keywords: capture, note-taking, daily review, what to capture, second brain, PKM, personal knowledge management, inbox zero for my brain
- Default for: Starlight Second Brain
- Composes with: memory/vault-management, memory/knowledge-synthesis, creator-productivity
What This Skill Does
Defines the discipline of daily capture. Tool-agnostic — works with Obsidian, Notion, Apple Notes, Drafts, plain text, voice memos. The skill prescribes when, what, and where, never which app. The practice survives tool changes; a tool-specific practice does not survive practice drift.
Capture is the cheapest part of PKM. Routing is where people fail. This skill fixes routing without making capture expensive.
Core Principles
- Friction is the enemy. If daily capture takes more than 10 minutes, the architecture is wrong. Simplify — fewer fields, fewer decisions, fewer apps.
- Voice-memo first when thinking, transcribe later. Thinking while typing loses signal. Speak, transcribe, then route.
- No capture moves to archive without distillation. Archive is not a trash can. If it's going to archive untouched, it was noise — don't capture it next time.
- Inbox is allowed; indecision is not. If routing is unclear at capture time, dump to inbox. Resolve at weekly review. Never stall the capture moment deciding where it goes.
- Minimum-viable format. One sentence + context + date + source. Anything more slows capture; anything less loses re-findability.
Procedures
Procedure 1: Define Capture Moments
The person names their recurring capture triggers. Examples — pick what fits their life, don't prescribe:
- Post-meeting / post-call — one-sentence takeaway within 5 minutes of hanging up
- Morning pages — 3–10 minutes free-write before other work
- Shower / walk thoughts — voice memo, transcribe later
- Reading sessions — highlight + one-line "why this mattered" per highlight
- End of day — 5-minute scan: anything notable today that deserves to survive?
The point is recurring triggers, not constant vigilance. Capture at defined moments; don't try to capture continuously.
Procedure 2: Route Captures By Type
Every capture gets routed to exactly one namespace. Default routing:
| Capture type | Destination |
|---|
| Strategic insight (decision, opportunity, trade-off) | personal/<slug>/strategic-vault.md |
| Creative idea (content, aesthetic, narrative) | personal/<slug>/creative-vault.md |
| Operational lesson (what worked, what broke, what to change) | personal/<slug>/operational-vault.md |
| Pattern noticed (three times it's a pattern) | personal/<slug>/wisdom-vault.md |
| Framework evolution (edits an existing Genius Profile framework) | second-brain/genius-evolution/<slug>.md |
| Unclear at capture time | second-brain/inbox/ |
Routing is a 1-second decision at capture time. If it takes longer than that, the capture is unclear → inbox. Resolve at weekly review.
Procedure 3: Minimum-Viable Capture Format
Every capture, regardless of destination, has four fields and only four:
### [YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM] <Title — one line, searchable>
**Context:** <what was happening when this came up — one phrase>
**Source:** <meeting / reading / walk / voice memo / <person-name> / etc.>
<The capture. One to five sentences. Stop when you have the thought captured.>
No tags. No categories. No priority. No status. Those are routing problems, solved by destination. The capture is just the capture.
Procedure 4: Inbox-Zero Cadence
- Daily: Clear captured items into their namespaces. Items without clear destination → inbox.
- Weekly (30 min): Inbox to zero. Every inbox item gets a destination or gets dropped (dropping is a valid answer — it's not all signal).
- Monthly (90 min): Distill captures of the month into drafts (see
insight-distillation skill).
- Quarterly (half-day): Integrate with Genius Profile. Promote validated patterns.
The discipline is in the weekly. If weekly review slips, the monthly and quarterly cascades collapse.
Procedure 5: Capture Quality Gate
Not everything earns a vault entry. At weekly review, apply this gate to every inbox item:
- Does this earn permanent space, or is it a passing thought?
- Will I be able to tell in 6 months why I captured this? If not, drop it.
- Is this a one-off or does it echo prior captures? One-off stays personal; echoes feed distillation.
- Would losing this cost me something? If no, drop it. If yes, route it.
Dropping captures is healthy. It's the feedback loop that teaches you to capture better next time.
Procedure 6: Tool Integration
SBIS does not prescribe a tool. The skill prescribes capabilities the tool must support:
- Fast capture entry — less than 10 seconds from intent to saved
- Voice memo capture + transcript — Apple Notes, Drafts, AudioPen, Voice Memos + Whisper
- Text search across all captures — Obsidian, Notion, Apple Notes all work
- Markdown-compatible storage — so captures survive tool migration
- Mobile + desktop parity — capture happens everywhere life happens
Example tool stacks (pick one, or mix):
- Obsidian stack: Daily Notes plugin for capture, Dataview for routing, plain folders for namespaces
- Notion stack: Quick Capture database, Filter views for namespace routing
- Apple Notes stack: Daily note per day, folders for namespaces, Siri voice-capture
- Plain-text stack: Drafts or iA Writer for capture, folders for namespaces, ripgrep for search
Tool choice is personal. Discipline is universal.
Rules
- Never prescribe a specific app. SBIS is tool-agnostic. If the person already has a tool, use it. If they don't, ask what fits their life.
- Never require more than four fields at capture time (title, context, source, content). Adding fields adds friction. Friction kills the practice.
- Never move captures to archive without distillation. Archive is for distilled material and raw captures that have served their purpose, not a trash can.
- Never let inbox grow past one week. If inbox is past zero on review day, something about routing is broken — diagnose before adding more captures.
- Always voice-memo first when the person is thinking. Typing while thinking loses signal. Speak, transcribe, then route.
- Always cap daily capture at 10 minutes. If it's taking longer, simplify.
- Always let the person drop captures. Not every thought deserves to survive.
Integration Points
- Vault:
second-brain/ namespace + personal sub-namespaces in all 6 existing vaults. See memory/VAULT_ARCHITECTURE.md.
- Agents: Starlight Second Brain (primary). Sage reads institutional signals; Genius reads evolution signals.
- Commands:
/capture-daily invokes this skill; /orchestrate-brain runs it in weekly-review context.
- Skills: Composes with
memory/knowledge-synthesis (cross-reference at weekly review), memory/vault-management (persistence), creator-productivity (shared session-memory model).
Quality Criteria
- Does daily capture stay under 10 minutes?
- Does every capture land in a namespace or the inbox — never mid-air?
- Is the inbox at zero on weekly review day?
- Does the person still use the system 30 days in? 90 days in?
- Can the person tell in 6 months why each retained capture survived?
Built on SIP — Starlight Intelligence Protocol
- Substrate: starlightintelligence.org/protocol v1.1.0
- Layers used: [file-contract, attestation, commands, sovereignty]
- Verticals: starlight-intelligence-system@v7.4 (SBIS alpha)
- Generated: 2026-04-24
- Attestation is compounding, not credit transfer: every composition strengthens every node.
