Suggest edit — Personal Cognition — the individual layer

Title

Name

Note

---
title: Personal Cognition — the individual layer
type: layer
visibility: public
audience: users
related:
  - wiki/framings/graph-database-for-your-brain.md
  - wiki/framings/notebook-for-our-minds.md
  - wiki/framings/bicycle-for-the-mind.md
  - wiki/framings/sparks-of-motivation.md
  - wiki/system-map.md
---

# Personal Cognition

The individual layer. One user, one graph, one life. This is IdeaFlow at your desk, in your pocket, in your voice memo, in your meeting.

## What it does, in one line

> "It's a **[[framings/notebook-for-our-minds|notebook for our minds]]**."

## What it's for

- **Capture** without thinking about where it goes. Voice, keyboard, import, photo, message.
- **Cluster** automatically, so the same spark found in five contexts shows up once with five handles.
- **Recall** in O(1) — the thought is where you need it when you need it.
- **Surface** proactively — the substrate reminds you of the person you haven't followed up with, the paper that connects to what you're writing, the goal you articulated six months ago.

## The promise

> "You can tell it anything and it organizes it into a structure that makes sense and you can find it again."

## The anti-promise (what *not* to expect)

It won't feel like a *magical assistant* that reads your mind. It feels like a notebook that quietly gets smarter. See [[../what-it-is-not]].

## Key framings that live here

- [[../framings/graph-database-for-your-brain]] — the data-model metaphor
- [[../framings/notebook-for-our-minds]] — the aesthetic metaphor
- [[../framings/bicycle-for-the-mind]] — the augmentation metaphor (Jobs/Engelbart)
- [[../framings/sparks-of-motivation]] — the mission metaphor
- [[../framings/gestalt-capture-to-gestalt-processing]] — the methodology

## Use cases (concrete)

See [[../use-cases]], "Personal layer" section:

- Conversation notes → knowledge base
- Contacts auto-populated from conversations
- Meeting notes, well-organized for the first time
- Quick capture, quick sort (mobile)
- Personal KG × world KG for fundraising

## Pitches that draw from this layer

- [[../pitches/for-users]]
- [[../pitches/elevator-summary]]

## Related (vision-convo cross-links)

- [Sparks of Motivation](https://wikihub.md/@jacobcole/vision-convo/wiki/concepts/sparks-of-motivation)
- [Inner Ecosystem](https://wikihub.md/@jacobcole/vision-convo/wiki/concepts/inner-ecosystem)
- [Voice-First Thought Capture](https://wikihub.md/@jacobcole/vision-convo/wiki/practices/voice-first-thought-capture)

## Why this layer comes first

Every user of the team and collective layers starts here — as an individual. The personal layer is the onramp. Skip it and you build a top-down system that serves no one's actual habits.