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Create a sticky note

A sticky note is a carried note: something a person or agent sticks onto the knowledge graph. This skill turns a moment in a conversation into one — drafting the words, choosing the theme, deciding where it goes — and shows it before it is attached to anything.

it will use input from use in drafting message of sticky note (either by interpretation of that context, or direct quotation). it will then determine where to place it … it should also preview sticky note … before confriming it and assigning to node
— owner, 2026-09-20

The one rule that makes this safe

Preview, confirm, then attach — in that order, always.

A sticky lands in committed state: todos/items/ is a graph a person reads, and folio/ is rendered to a website. Writing first and asking afterwards means the wrong note is already in somebody’s list. The preview costs one exchange and is never skipped, not for a short note and not for an obvious one.

An unattached sticky is a legitimate outcome. Previewed, looked at, and left where it is. That is not a failed run — a note nobody needed is cheapest when it never reached the graph.

The six steps

1. Read the context, and say what you took from it

Name the moment the sticky is about: a ruling, a measurement, a question that went unanswered, a thing somebody will need again. If you cannot name it, there is no sticky to make.

2. Draft the words — quote, or interpret, and SAY WHICH

Two modes, and the choice is reported rather than silent:

	when	how
direct quotation	the words carry information their paraphrase loses — a joke, a term of art, a ruling’s exact scope	verbatim, down to the spelling.
interpretation	the point is clear but scattered across several turns, or the original was a fragment	write it plainly, and keep any phrase that was doing work.

Prefer quotation when in doubt. This repository has paid for the opposite: “please be introduced to a cat who acquires things, for whatever purpose, maybe somebody knows” is a joke that carries a real gloss, and “the documentation you will never read” is honestly true of every thorough docs site. Sanding either into a product sentence would have lost the only part that told a reader anything.

A summary is derived from the body’s first line unless the note needs its own. Two fields the author must keep in step is one field that drifts.

3. Choose the theme — a judgement, not a lookup

no formal role/theme mapping per se. that is authoring (human/agentic) decision/judgement
— owner, 2026-09-20

So there is no table to consult here, and adding one would contradict a ruling. Choose from what the note is doing: the shipped themes are grumpy-cat, engineer, library, analyst, plus the palette-only pale-sage, dusty-carolina, their -fade variants, and the two high-contrast themes. schemas/themes.ts is the list; state the reason for the one you picked, in a clause.

Two mechanical facts worth knowing before choosing:

A theme whose art the instance does not declare resolves to palette only, not to a broken image — resolveThemeBackdrop reports that third state rather than serving art that is not there.
An incomplete backdrop is refused wholesale. Two of three layouts renders as no art, not two thirds. Check bun run cat check:theme-art if you are about to rely on a role you have not seen render.

4. Decide where it goes — `todos/` is the default, not the only answer

destination	when	what it becomes
`todos/items/` — the default	somebody has an outstanding item	a `todo/1.0.0` node: `status`, `priority`, `origin`, plus the tags below
`todos/feedback/`	it is about a specific block, with the submitter’s identity	the content-review feedback workflow the `todo-review` skill reads
`folio/`	it belongs on a rendered page	a landing sticky — but a page’s sticky is a layer’s contribution, so it is declared in that layer’s `<name>.json`, not written here. A landing sticky lives in the `folio/` of the instance it describes, never in another instance’s (bean `1yd7`), so a mounted instance’s sticky arrives with the mount. `cat-harness/folio/` still holds other instances’ stickies until `1yd7` moves them — do not add one there
nowhere	it was worth showing and not worth keeping	previewed in the conversation and left there

todos/ is not beans/, and this is the line the repository keeps paying to redraw. A todo is a person’s outstanding item; a bean is the agent work plan. AGENTS.md forbids standing a second work plan beside beans/, so a sticky that is really agent work is a bean — use todo-manager, not this.

5. Bind it to the graph

A CarriedNote carries its attachments, and each is optional:

anchor — page-global ({kind: "page", page}), a block ({kind: "block", block}), or none. Absent is a fourth state and means not yet placed.
roles, processes, tasks — what it is about in the process model.
identities — who it is assigned to, as provider:id (github:litlfred). Assignment is a tag, not a transfer: it says who should see it, and the person has not agreed to anything by being named.
references — KG corpus nodes by {kind, id}: a bean, a block, a skill.
artefacts — files and external things.

Leave out what you do not know. An empty identities is unassigned, which is a real answer; a guessed one is a false one.

6. Preview, on the surface the reader is on

In the conversation when that is where the decision is being made — render it as it will read, not as a JSON dump. Show the theme, the placement and the assignment as a header, then the body as a reader sees it.

On the knowledge graph when the note is one of many, or when its look matters — build the page and screenshot it. A rendered artefact cannot be assessed from a description of it, and this repository has the measurement: three defects in the sticky board were invisible to a green suite and visible the moment somebody looked.

Then ask, and attach only on a yes.

Worked example — an unattached one

Asked for a sticky about reading the documentation, explicitly not in todos/:

Context — orientation. Somebody arriving at this repository asks a question the guides answer.
Words — interpretation, with one quotation kept. No ruling to quote, so the body is written; but “the documentation you will never read” is kept verbatim, because the repository’s own landing sticky already says it and it is the honest expectation.
Theme — grumpy-cat. RTFM is a grumpy sentiment and the cat is the one that carries it. Judgement, stated; no table consulted.
Placement — none. Explicitly not todos/: nobody has an outstanding item here, and filing it would put a signpost in somebody’s task list.
Bindings — none. identities empty, so unassigned. One artefacts entry pointing at the docs site is what the note is for.
Preview in the conversation, and stop. There is nothing to confirm, because there is nothing to attach.

What this skill does not do

It does not write a landing-page sticky. Those are a layer’s contribution, declared in its declaration — see sticky-contribution.ts.
It does not create beans. Agent work is todo-manager’s.
It does not delete or overwrite a sticky it did not make. Editing somebody else’s note is the deletion-requires-confirmation case.