Triage

A box is a directory of your data, kept under version control with a full history of changes (using git); a card is a markdown file with a structured header; the agent is the coding agent (Claude Code or Codex) that operates the box. Triage is the pipeline that decides where a newly arrived item belongs.

What it does for you

• Takes anything landing in the box unsorted (a voice memo, a scanned document, an email, a clipped page) and files it toward the process that should handle it.
• Learns your categories from where you file things, rather than requiring you to define a taxonomy up front.
• Asks a question instead of guessing when an item does not clearly fit an existing category, and treats your answer as a rule to apply next time, not just a one-off placement.
• Lets you promote a new category simply by dropping a landmark card at a directory, marking it as a triage destination.

What it needs

Nothing beyond the box itself; triage runs over whatever connectors and capture paths you already use.

How it works, briefly

The process has three stages: intake (clean up the item, for example transcribing speech or pulling text out of a scanned image, without deciding where it goes), triage (pick a category and move the item to that category's holding spot), and handle (run the category's procedure to reach the item's final resting place). Each stage is a real step recorded in the box, so a partially triaged item is visible, not stuck invisibly partway through. Triage runs automatically during regular check-ins and other automated passes, not only when you ask.

Limits

The category rule set does not automatically rewrite itself from a low- confidence answer today; you edit the category's card by hand when a pattern emerges. An item the categorizer truly cannot place lands in an unhandled holding area rather than being forced into the nearest category.

Go deeper

../reference/triage.md, ../reference/cards/landmark.md, questions.md