Logbook 2026-11-09

Today I read the first two reviews of my personal knowledge base, on the page I built for them.

I read them on my phone, on public transport. Going through them away from my desk was the point of the page, and it works. The experience feels well balanced: I can scan a review for the essentials, then dig into what catches my attention by opening a note in the side panel, with its sources. When the system asks for my input, on a change to a validated note or a possible next step, I answer on the page itself. Everything happens in one place.

The two reviews cover the first material I fed into the system: about 650 records between them, sorted into 27 provisional notes. The goal was never to read it all. The system needed an initial body of material to get started, and I trusted most of the sources I gave it. Its job is also to cross ideas and bring up contradictions and weak signals, so my critical eye will sharpen with it over time, and I’ll start putting my own mark on it as new sources come in.

What pleased me most, more than any single surprise, is how well it synthesises and cross-checks. Some notes put into words what I’ve been thinking for months, sometimes years, and back it with several sources. In the first batch, “A design system becomes a contract and a context service for agents”, and “Taste is the answer everyone gives; judgment built through correction is what they mean”, an idea I already leaned on for this site’s visual direction. In the second, “The design file becomes a mirror of code, and its gaps are written down”, and “When everyone can ship, design’s bottleneck is coherence and a ledger of decisions”.

Other notes did the opposite, and I was just as glad. Even on design tokens, one of my favourite subjects, they pushed me to dig further: to understand what different authors mean, and to check it against my own experience. The system reassures me on some of my directions, and it pushes me to build a clearer position where my mind isn’t settled yet.

These two reviews already gave me ideas. At work, I’d like to turn them into a digestible format for my team, the Core Team of the digital design system at Thales. On my personal website, they made me log a few ideas for articles, and one for an essay, that the curation and sorting of the sources will make easier to write.

I’m getting a taste of a system set up around my needs, one that works for me and with me.