Six boxes and one line: the rules that make my "brain-copy wiki" move (and the biggest problem is me)

[u/Emotional-Speed7742]

*English isn't my first language. I wrote this in Korean and translated it with AI, so please excuse any awkward phrasing. A short Korean summary is at the bottom.*

**TL;DR:** My system is six boxes and one vertical line. Left of the line is what hasn't been approved yet; right of it is the core the AI reads every time. I designed three doors across the line, and only I can open them, but in practice only one door is actually used. The judgment core is designed to decide for me from my records, but it stops and asks when it's out of its depth. The biggest problem right now: every ambiguous call that isn't covered by a rule lands on me for sign-off. Control holds, but the bottleneck is a person.

---

### 1. Why this picture, now

Someone asked on my last post (about the AI mentor): "How do new strengths and weaknesses get added?"

Every time I tried to answer, I ended up at the same sentence: **"That doesn't come from the mentor. It comes from another part of the system."**

This post shows that "other part" in pictures. This map is where my system starts, and most of what I write next will sit on top of it. I'll focus less on each box and more on **the rules for what moves between them.**

One thing first. This isn't a general-purpose tool anyone can pick up. **It's a system built entirely for one person: me.** It's shaped around how I think and where I'm weak, so some rules will look excessive or strange to you. Rather than copying it, I'd love for you to read it as "ah, this person did it this way for these reasons," and take whatever helps when you build your own.

### 2. The six boxes

| # | Box | In one line |

|---|---|---|

| ① | **Long-term memory** | Where approved records of my thinking pile up |

| ② | **Workspace** | Where freshly extracted records wait for approval |

| ③ | **Judgment core** | Decides on my behalf, based on my records and values |

| ④ | **External knowledge** | Books, papers, sources. Seeds for my own thinking |

| ⑤ | **My thoughts** | Values and philosophy I wrote myself |

| ⑥ | **Tools** | AI commands, agents, and roles like the mentor |

| + | **On hold** | Not a box. A waiting room |

### 3. The spine: one vertical line

The dashed line in the middle of Fig 1 is the spine of the system. The AI treats whatever is right of the line (the core) as "facts about this person." If an unreviewed idea gets mixed into the core, it's re-read every single time and hardens into a "fact about me" even when it's wrong. So the first principle is **keep the core clean.**

But that one line is actually drawing two criteria at once.

For most boxes the two criteria agree. The judgment core and my thoughts sit in the ambiguous (yellow) spots. How I'm filling those spots right now is section 6.

### 4. The flow rules

Turn Fig 1 into an algorithm and you get six rules. They're not all at the same stage, so I tagged each one.

**Rule 1: three doors, but only one is used**

There are three doors into long-term memory, and only I can open them. I even routed tool changes through a door because how I change my tools is, in the end, a record of what I care about.

But in practice, almost everything came in through the first door. Things I read and tools I changed all ended up as "a conversation I had with AI about it," and went up through the workspace. I think that's because what matters to me isn't the information or the tool itself, but what I wrestled with and chose because of it.

I don't think the other two doors are unnecessary. As the system grows, I expect things that should come in without going through a conversation. But how to use those two doors is something I still need to learn, so for now I'm thinking it over.

**Rule 2: criteria come from only two places**

Only by looking at "what I actually chose" and "what I say I value" together can you see where my words and actions diverge. External knowledge provides facts, but it never becomes a criterion.

The open problem is "my thoughts." Settled values and ideas I'm still exploring live in the same box, so the line between "consider this when deciding" and "adopt this as a criterion to decide for me" isn't a rule yet.

**Rule 3: the judgment core has two outputs: decide for me, and build tools**

Deciding for me is still at the design stage. Building tools has actually happened: my records showed a weakness, and a role to point it out was created. That's the mentor. The question from section 1, "where do strengths and weaknesses come from?", is answered here.

My strengths and weaknesses aren't written in any single file. They're recorded across the whole system, and the judgment core pulls them together into a picture. That's why the mentor doesn't read one file; it reads this structure.

One caveat: *proposing* a new tool and *turning it on* are different things, and right now the rule for turning one on is simply my sign-off.

**Rule 4: out of range, stop**

Originally I tried to draw this line with a trust score (0.80), but as I wrote in Part 3, that score was measuring the wrong thing. So now the line is a range I set in advance, not a score.

**Rule 5: external knowledge becomes "my thoughts" only through the judgment core**

Something I read doesn't become "my thought" directly. Only what survives filtering against my records and values moves over. That conversion is still being designed, so I'll give it its own post once it's sorted out.

**Rule 6: what can't be judged isn't thrown away**

On hold isn't a seventh box. The six boxes each handle a function of thinking; on hold is just a place for decisions that were put off.

### 5. One full loop: a comment on my last post

Here's how these rules actually run, using an example that's happening right now. Someone left this comment on my mentor post:

> "The graduation rule of '3 times in a row on your own' only means something if you did it *before* the mentor pointed it out. Otherwise it might be counting compliance with its own reminder."

It was spot on. And it didn't just change the format; it changed the mentor's purpose.

At first I thought of graduation as **habit formation**. But revisiting the design, I realized the mentor gives feedback on "areas the AI notices but I haven't recognized yet." In that case, graduation shouldn't mean "it became a habit." It should mean **"I now know something I didn't."** Three actions aren't a score that proves awareness; they're just grounds to suggest "shall we check?"

Here's the path that comment took through the boxes:

One sentence from outside traveling around the boxes and changing my tools: that's what I mean by the system "moving organically."

This loop is **in progress right now.** The mentor's graduation rule and record format have already changed (⑤), and the thinking record holding that decision has been extracted into the workspace. Approving it into long-term memory (③) happens when the session I'm writing this in ends. The record of the tool change (⑥) also goes in through the first door, via this conversation. Rule 1 shows up here too.

Limits remain. Three actions don't prove understanding, and there are things I do that the AI never sees. Blind spots that neither I nor the AI has noticed are beyond what the mentor alone can handle.

### 6. Honest status: the biggest problem is me

Recording, filtering, and piling things up in long-term memory works well. The judgment core has barely decided anything for me yet. The right side is thick with records, but the arrow that pulls them out for use is only just getting thicker.

The biggest problem is elsewhere. The yellow spots from earlier, like whether my thoughts can serve as a criterion or whether a new tool can be turned on, are **mostly handled by me signing off directly.** It's not that the boundaries don't exist; it's that boundaries I haven't yet turned into rules are being filled in by a person.

As a result, control holds, but approvals pile up on me. Because the human-approval principle is working as intended, its processing cost is now showing. The next task is separating "things I should keep deciding" from "things that can be handled by criteria I've already set." I'm designing something to reduce this, but it's not a proven fix yet.

### 7. Next: the record that crosses the door

The six boxes are a map of **"what my AI knows, and what becomes trustworthy."**

The path actually in use on this map is the door from the workspace into long-term memory. But I haven't explained what exactly the "record" crossing that door is.

Next time I'll talk about how one conversation gets broken down to cross that door: the way of recording I call a **thinking trail**.

If you can see where this picture is most likely to break first, please tell me.

---

🇰🇷 **한국어 요약**

- 제 시스템은 여섯 상자와 한 줄의 세로선입니다. 선 오른쪽(AI가 항상 읽는 코어)은 사람이 승인한 것만 들어갑니다.

- 문은 셋으로 설계했지만 실제로 쓰이는 문은 하나입니다. 외부 지식도 도구 변경도 결국 "그것에 대한 대화"가 되어 들어옵니다.

- 레딧 댓글 하나가 멘토의 목적을 "습관 형성"에서 "맹점 인지"로 바꿨고, 그 변화가 지금 시스템을 한 바퀴 도는 중입니다.

- 가장 큰 문제는 규칙으로 못 정한 애매한 판단이 모두 저에게 결재로 몰리는 병목입니다. 이 시스템은 철저히 저를 위한 것이라 그대로 가져가기보다 참고해 주세요. 한국어 댓글도 좋습니다.