People and places

An assistant that does not know who "Dad" is, or that "the office" is a specific address, either asks you every time or guesses. The same name arrives differently in an email, a calendar invitation, and a photo caption, and nothing connects them. A box is one directory of your data, a card is one markdown file in it, and the agent is the coding agent that reads those cards before it interprets a name.

What you do. Name people as they come up: full name, the names you actually call them, the relationship, contact details. Say which of them the box is working for. Name places: Home, Office, the gym. Stand at a place and have the box stamp your device's current location into that place's card.

What the box does. A person card holds the name, aliases, role, contact fields, and freeform notes, with a flag marking the people the box serves. A place card holds the name, aliases, a human-readable address, and optionally a center coordinate and match radius, which the box writes from a device fix rather than letting anyone type them. Once a place has coordinates, the box can say which named place your location falls inside, so an agent turn can know you are at Home. Briefings reference person cards as an area's key people, and records name the people and location involved, so one person in twenty places is one card.

What it needs. Nothing beyond the box; a device whose location the box can read, for the coordinate stamp. Cards, what it requires.

Where it is still rough. The location paths are verified in the code and have not been exercised end to end in a checked box, so treat them as built rather than proven. Coordinates must be stamped while you are at the place. Location is a radius match against places you named, not tracking. Person cards are the box's own contacts: the documentation describes no sync from a phone's address book or Google Contacts.

What makes it possible

• Typed cards with validated fields (cards): aliases, a role, an address, a coordinate and a radius are checked fields rather than prose, so one person named twenty ways stays one card.
• Briefings (briefing): a directory's standing context names its key people by linking their cards, so who matters here is written down once.

Read next. The glossary, person, place, briefing, record.