Capture. The Intake Surface
30-second intake that routes itself when you pick the right type
By the end of this module
The Job of Capture
Capture exists because: get the thought out of your head before you lose it, with just enough metadata for future-you to route it correctly.
That's it. It is not the place to flesh out the idea, evaluate it, or decide what to do with it. Those are downstream jobs (triage, decisions, projects). Capture's only job is friction reduction.
The 30-second budget breaks down: ~5 seconds to type a title, ~5 seconds to pick a type, ~20 seconds to add context if it's a fresh insight, ~0 seconds if it's just a half-formed thought. If you're spending more than a minute on capture, you've started doing triage early, stop and save.
Why Type Matters
Every capture carries a type. The type is not bureaucratic taxonomy, it changes how the idea is routed and scored.
A Decision capture doesn't sit in the Vault waiting to be triaged. It's a flag that says "I owe future-me a structured decision log on this." Most users miss this distinction and let decision-shaped thoughts rot as RAW ideas for weeks.
A Framework or Insight capture is pre-flagged as a likely vault asset. When you triage it, the COMPOUNDING_ASSET outcome is the natural fit, and the CONVERT_TO_ASSET recommendation will fire after 14 days if you forget.
A Quick Note is the escape hatch. Use it when you genuinely don't know what category the thought belongs to. Don't use it as a default, it bypasses the routing logic entirely.
What Happens After Capture
All captures (except Decisions) enter as status: RAW and live in the Vault. From there:
- Day 0-7: Idle in the Vault. Nothing prompts you.
- Day 7: Appears in the Stale Captures panel on Today.
- Day 30: If 3+ RAW ideas hit this age, STALE_CAPTURES fires as a Medium-priority recommendation.
- Day 30+ with 10+ stale: STALE_CAPTURES escalates to High priority. The system is telling you the capture/triage ratio is broken.
The exit paths are: triage to a score (most common), bulk-park (for "interesting but not now"), or bulk-archive (for "I was wrong about this being interesting").
Common Mistakes
Defaulting everything to Quick Note. This is the most common adoption failure. It bypasses Foundry's routing logic and turns the Vault into an unstructured pile. Spend the extra two seconds to pick the right type.
Capturing decided things as ideas. If you have already decided something, it is not an idea, it is a Decision. Use the Decision capture type and the entry routes to /decisions where it belongs.
Skipping project linkage. If a capture is obviously about an active project, link it now. Triage will find it 10 times faster, and the project journal stays coherent.
Capture Type Matrix
Practice Checkpoints
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Next in Foundations Path
Vault. Your Compounding Library
Ideas are ephemeral; assets compound. The vault is where the difference shows up.