Chapter 10

What Vinc Stores

Part 0 said why memory has to become a system. Now we turn to how. The first question is the most physical one: in what form does Vinc store memory?

1. A memory is not one value

Vinc does not store everything as one loose block of text. A single memory sits on five axes.

Kind. Whether this memory is a concept, a decision, a record or an event is fixed by the kind of its Node.

Relation. In what capacity this memory joins another is fixed by an Edge, which has a name and a direction.

Time. When the thing this memory speaks of happened, when it entered the graph, and until when it holds are fixed by three axes.

Space and topic. Whose memory it is, and under which topic it sits, fix its reach and its place.

Source. Which sentence this memory came from is proved by the source text, which is kept as it was.

This chapter touches each axis once. Kind and relation belong to Chapter 11, the source text to Chapter 12, the system of concepts to Chapter 13, the contract for writing and reading to Chapter 14, and the path a document travels to Chapter 15.

2. Five kinds and one open place

The system knows five Node kinds structurally and handles each differently.

Concept. What is true now. It is referred to again and again, becomes the target retrieval settles on, and forms relations with other Concepts.

Decision. What was chosen then. It stands in the same place as a Concept, so wherever a Concept may be an endpoint, a Decision may be too, except in relates_to. Together these two are the graph's semantic layer.

Record. What was observed or measured. It carries the period during which it held.

Episode. What happened, and when. An event on the timeline.

Bridge. The point where separate domains meet.

Outside these five there is one open place. Someone structuring their own subject eventually needs a kind that is none of the five. Vinc does not make them pick the nearest. Under the type name they chose, the node lands on a carrier called Entity, and that name is folded into their vocabulary as a proposal. Chapter 13 tells that story.

And there is one Node nobody writes by hand. Following the slashes in the domain string attached to a memory, the system makes Domain nodes on its own. Write vinc/design and design appears under vinc. That is how the tree of topics is derived.

3. Time has three axes

The three axes from Chapter 6 become storage here.

Content time. When the thing the memory speaks of actually happened. Concepts, Records and documents carry it; an Episode carries it as its date.

Graph time. When the memory entered the graph. The system stamps it.

Valid time. The period during which what a Record or Decision claims holds. Start and end are kept separately: a Record in its own columns, a Decision in its properties.

“Does it still hold?” is stored nowhere. It is computed from these three axes each time something is read. A stored status goes false because nobody updates it. The structure of time returns in Chapter 24.

4. Space and topic

A memory has an owner. A personal graph belongs to a person, a team graph to a team. Reading and writing both happen only within that scope, and a Node owned by someone else is skipped rather than merged.

A memory also has a place. The domain string above builds the tree of topics. Memories under the same topic are searched together and seen together.

The owner fixes the reach, the topic fixes the place. They are different questions.

5. The source text lives apart

When memory is structured, the original sentences are not thrown away. A document's source text stays inside the graph as it was, and the Concepts and relations drawn from it can be traced back to the sentence they came from.

The graph is not a copy that replaces the document. It is the structure that holds onto the meaning and relations a document can be used for again. How the two are joined is Chapter 12.

Of the five axes, kind and relation come first. What a Node and an Edge actually promise is the next chapter.

Continue with Chapter 11, What Are Nodes and Edges.