# Capture Seeds Before You Know Their Use **Claim**: A capture system works best when it lets me record a one-sentence idea before I know what it's for, building a seed bank that feeds later synthesis rather than forcing premature categorization. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Scope & conditions Holds when there is a reliable promotion step downstream (seed → Fleeting note → Literature/Permanent note) that periodically reviews the seed bank. Breaks when seeds accumulate with no review cadence and the capture layer becomes a graveyard nobody revisits — capture without a promotion habit is just deferred loss. ## Evidence Ryder Carroll's short-form "rapid logging" compresses a thought to one sentence for speed, because "the best idea in the world is worthless if we forget it." He calls this an idea's "seed" — captured fast, nurtured later. This maps directly onto a Fleeting-note intake: a seed is a Fleeting note before it earns a Literature or Permanent home, and the outline move (seed sentence → examples → objections) mirrors how a claim gets built out into a full argument. ## Links - [[3. Resources/Literature Notes/The 4 Levels of Thinking on Paper]] — source literature note, full claim atoms and quotes. - [[3. Resources/MOCs/Personal Knowledge Management MOC]] — applies-in the capture-to-synthesis pipeline design. - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/The Agent That Captured Everything Is the Wrong Reader to Find the Story]] — contrasts: capture and story-finding need different readers (Meyer). ## Tests / falsifiers If adding a one-sentence "seed bank" capture habit produces no measurable increase in the Fleeting-to-Permanent conversion rate compared to capturing only inside the digital synthesis tool, the claim that a low-friction pre-categorization capture step helps would be undercut. ## Maintenance Last tended: 2026-08-16 Next review: 2026-11-16 ## Source [[3. Resources/Literature Notes/The 4 Levels of Thinking on Paper]]