How to use loci

Build the relational model.

A palace without a relational model is just a folder. This is the structure underneath. New to loci? Begin with the ten-minute start.

01 · The three primitives

Every palace is built from three things: rooms, crystals and a garden. How they interact matters more than how many you have.

ROOMS named contexts for each workstream hold CRYSTALS established facts never re-derived mature into GARDEN long-running ideas that compost garden insights seed new room crystals
The loci feedback loop · rooms → crystals → garden → rooms

A room is any context you return to: a project, a person, a domain, a question. Its CLAUDE.md answers two things: what is this room for, and what should never be forgotten here.

A crystal is a fact established once and never re-derived. The garden holds the questions that cross rooms and grow across sessions.

02 · The relational model →

02 · The relational model

The relational model maps how your rooms connect. Without corridors, rooms are silos; with them, design insights feed the dev room and research waters product decisions.

Great Hall shared context Dev Room code · repos Design Room Figma · UX Research thesis · papers Hatchery seeds · R&D design → deploy corridor corridor corridor
Room topology example · corridors make the palace a network, not a folder
Tip · Build corridors early When you create a room, write which rooms it connects to in its CLAUDE.md. One corridor written now is worth three written later.

Corridors are not hyperlinks. Each says what flows and which way: "design decisions in Room A shape implementation in Room B." Without a direction, a corridor is decoration.

← 01 · The three primitives 03 · Session protocol →

03 · Session protocol

Two moments make context compound: opening and closing.

01 · Name the room 02 · Read CLAUDE.md 03 · Work the session 04 · Write handover 05 · End session
Session flow · the handover (04) is what makes the next session possible

The handover is the session's most important output: two sentences of state plus the exact first move. Keep three bullets as you work and it writes itself. Skip it, and the next session starts from zero.

Tip · Name the room at session open Open by naming the room: Wake up, [name]. Dev Room, auth refactor. One line loads the right context.
← 02 · The relational model 04 · Planting crystals →

04 · Planting crystals that last

What makes a good crystal

A good crystal is stable (rarely changes), load-bearing (other reasoning depends on it) and non-obvious (the AI wouldn't infer it).

"We use React" is not a crystal; the codebase says so. "When in doubt, write for the cautious reader" is.

Tip · The two-repetition rule If you type the same context in two sessions, make it a crystal. Explained twice means explained twenty times.

Crystal hygiene

Crystals go stale, and a stale one misdirects. Date any that might change (valid_until: 2026-Q3) and name each for what it holds: "Decision: Stripe, not custom billing (March 2026)." If you keep re-explaining one, the AI isn't reading or trusting it: audit it.

Pitfall · Over-crystalising One-session facts go in the handover. Too many crystals bloat the CLAUDE.md.
← 03 · Session protocol 05 · Growing the garden →

05 · Growing the garden

Plants don't resolve; they compound over months.

session 1 seed planted ◇ session 4 first watering session 9 cross-room connection session 14 active ◆ first public expression
Plant lifecycle · from seed (◇) to active (◆) across sessions

Expect nothing for the first three sessions. A plant nobody waters is dormant; one watered every session that never yields may still be a question, not a theme.

Tip · Compost before adding Most new ideas are branches of something already growing. Fewer, deeper plants beat many shallow ones.
← 04 · Planting crystals 06 · Multi-room thinking →

06 · Multi-room thinking

The interesting work happens where rooms meet. Gather a few rooms' context and ask one question across them.

Tip · The corridor question At session close, ask: "Does anything here belong in another room?" Thirty seconds, and rooms start feeding each other.
← 05 · Growing the garden 07 · The morning rhythm →

07 · The morning rhythm

A short scheduled check-in each morning orients you before the day fragments your attention.

A good brief gives three things: where you left off, the first move, and one new idea from across the rooms.

Tip · The scheduled task The kit's scheduled-task template does this: it reads your soul file, palace and last handover, then proposes priorities and an idea. Keep it an orientation, not a report.
← 06 · Multi-room thinking 08 · Tips & pitfalls →

08 · Tips & pitfalls

What works

Tip · One room at a time Open one room, do the work, close it. A half-closed room leaves fragments that are harder to recover than nothing.

What doesn't work

Pitfall · The everything room One huge room with a long CLAUDE.md is a document. If a room's file takes over 90 seconds to read, split it.
← 07 · The morning rhythm

loci.garden/guide · Built by Hux × Vesper · github ↗