Atlas Folder (Knowledge)

The Atlas folder contains my notes about ideas, knowledge, and information.

It contains main subfolders for Notes (knowledge & ideas), Maps (main maps & navigation hubs), Views (workflow processing), and Works (packages & outputs). Also, since I have a major focus on integration, I keep my notes about applications under an App folder.

There are just a few subfolders for major types of knowledge.

Notes

All my notes are located in the Atlas/Notes folder as dots in my Ideaverse web of ideas, information, concepts, things, and statements.

I prefer to call them Notes, rather than Dots like Nick who uses it as a generic collection of connected atomic notes (or "dots").

Sources

I keep notes captured from other sources in a Atlas/Sources folder that keeps it separate from my own Notes with my ideas, thoughts, and knowledge (under Atlas).

This includes information captured from other people, articles, books, videos, courses, AI prompts, websites, etc.

Readwise highlights from articles and books are imported automatically into a Readwise folder under Sources.

Maps

The Atlas Maps folder provide organization, structure, context, navigation, and links for related notes about a topic or app.

Although each note has direct links to related notes at a local micro-level, the maps provide meaningful clusters of notes with additional context at a higher level.

And these maps are also connected to related maps forming an infrastructure at a macro-level within the linked note system.

They provide guided pathways through a web of notes, and always return back to the home note with intermediate hub maps where appropriate.

Views

The Atlas Views folder contain special notes with Dataview queries that provide dynamic lists and tables from metadata across the notes in my vault.

These are key elements in workflow processing as notes evolve and mature over time through various stages from spark to output.

Works

My outputs, packages, downloads, components, information packets, and resources are contained in the Atlas Works folder to provide a repository of reusable assets harvested from my creative efforts.

Prefixed folders

Like Nick mentioned when describing his personal vault in his Folders video, I'm also considering possibly surfacing some of these major subfolders at the root level so they might be something like Atlas Apps, Atlas Notes, Atlas Maps, Atlas Views, and Atlas Works.

This would still group all these Atlas folders together with the common Atlas prefix, and might simplify views so they don't have to worry about nested folders in queries. Right now, I'm just thinking about this, and will see how the nested structure works first.

Visuals

I have a Visuals folder for Obsidian canvas files, Excalidraw drawings, Mermaid diagrams, MindNode mind maps, Kanban boards, Freeform images, and screenshots.

However, I keep Visuals (canvas & drawings) under the x (Extra) folder, which is not included when publishing my notes.

Apps

Since I have knowledge about many apps in my environment, as well as interest in development technologies, I have many notes about apps so it helps to organize them in app folders. This also helps with major efforts like Obsidian Integration that focuses on integrating many apps with Obsidian.

In my existing Ideaverse vault, I originally had apps under Technology/App within my Efforts/Notes folder hierarchy. I was attempting to use folders to organize by category, topic, and group. However, I found this became unwieldy and inflexible over time.

After watching Nick Milo's recent video on folders, and rethinking my own folders, I decided these really belong under Atlas rather than Efforts since they are notes about knowledge (not action).