Tag Taxonomy — Filtering and Discovering Through Tags

Tag Taxonomy

Every claim in the brain carries tags across 8 independent dimensions. These aren’t decorative — they’re a filtering system that lets you slice the brain from any angle and discover things you’d never find by reading.

The 8 dimensions

Dimension	Question it answers	Values
type/	What kind of note?	claim/atom, claim/structure, claim/index, entity/concept, entity/person
priority/	How central to the argument?	core, key, support, aside
certainty/	How solid is the evidence?	established, argued, speculative
stance/	Does the author endorse it?	endorsed, criticized, neutral
domain/	What field?	finance, jurisprudence, spiritual, psychology, investing, education, …
role/	What function does it serve?	fact, argument, definition, methodology, example, rebuttal, principle
backing/	What evidence type?	textual, transmitted, rational, authority, experiential, analogical, empirical, consensus, silence
strength/	How strong is the evidence?	definitive, strong, moderate, weak, contested

Each claim gets one tag per dimension. Together they form a fingerprint: priority/core + certainty/argued + backing/transmitted + strength/strong tells you this is a central claim, defended by the author, backed by a hadith the author considers reliable.

Practical filters that reveal insights

”What does this author actually know vs. what are they guessing?”

Filter by certainty/:

Filter	What you find
certainty/established	Facts the author treats as settled — the foundation
certainty/argued	Claims the author defends — the real argument
certainty/speculative	Guesses, predictions, hypotheses — where the author is uncertain

Try this: Open the tag page for certainty/speculative in Obsidian. You’ll see every moment where the author admits uncertainty. These are often the most interesting claims — they reveal the edges of the author’s knowledge.

”What’s actually important vs. what’s filler?”

Filter by priority/:

Filter	What you find
priority/core	Remove this and the whole argument collapses
priority/key	Important supporting points
priority/support	Evidence and examples — the bulk of any source
priority/aside	Tangents, historical notes, asides

Try this: Read ONLY priority/core claims from a source. You’ll get the entire argument in ~10-15 claims. This is a 5-minute summary that preserves the actual structure, not a lossy AI summary.

”Where does this author agree with the mainstream vs. go against it?”

Filter by stance/:

Filter	What you find
stance/endorsed	What the author believes and advocates
stance/criticized	What the author rejects — the counter-arguments
stance/neutral	What the author describes without taking sides

Try this: Read stance/criticized claims. These are the author’s intellectual opponents — the positions they argue against. You now know the debate landscape without reading the opponent’s book.

”How does this author argue? Evidence or assertion?”

Filter by backing/:

Filter	What you find
backing/textual	Claims backed by direct citation (Quran, statutes, primary sources)
backing/transmitted	Claims backed by reported chains (hadith, witness testimony)
backing/empirical	Claims backed by data, experiments, studies
backing/rational	Claims backed by pure logic
backing/experiential	Claims backed by personal stories and anecdotes
backing/authority	Claims backed by “expert X says…”
No backing/ tag	Claims with NO identifiable evidence — pure assertion

Try this: Find claims with no backing/ tag. These are the author’s unsupported assertions. In a business book, this might be 40% of claims. In a legal text, nearly zero. The ratio tells you about the author’s rigor.

”Show me the strongest and weakest evidence”

Filter by strength/:

Filter	What you find
strength/definitive	Evidence that settles the matter (direct Quranic text, clear statute, replicated experiment)
strength/strong	Solid evidence most would accept
strength/moderate	Reasonable but debatable
strength/weak	Anecdotal, speculative, or contested

Try this: Filter priority/core + strength/weak. These are the author’s most important claims with the weakest evidence — the structural vulnerabilities of the argument. If you want to critique a book, start here.

Cross-source discovery

The source/ tag enables instant cross-source comparison:

/dist:analytics

The analytics agent uses tags to compare sources mechanically:

• Which source has more certainty/established vs certainty/speculative?
• Which relies more on backing/experiential vs backing/empirical?
• Where do two sources have priority/core claims on the same entity?

Using tags in Obsidian

Tag pages

Click any tag in Obsidian to see all notes with that tag. This is the fastest way to filter:

1. Open any claim note
2. Click a tag like priority/core
3. See every core claim across all sources

Search queries

Use Obsidian’s search to combine tags:

tag:priority/core tag:certainty/speculative

This finds every claim that’s central to an argument but speculative — the shakiest foundations.

tag:backing/transmitted tag:source/ibn-qayyim-aldaa-waldawaa

All hadith-backed claims from Ibn Qayyim.

tag:stance/criticized

Every position any author rejects — the debate landscape across all sources.

Obsidian Bases

Use /dist:base to create database views that filter and sort by tags:

/dist:base claims by domain
/dist:base evidence strength distribution
/dist:base core claims with weak evidence

Bases give you spreadsheet-like views where each tag dimension is a filterable column.

Graph view coloring

Obsidian’s graph view becomes much more powerful when you color nodes by tags. This turns the graph from a generic web into a visual map of your brain’s structure.

Setting up graph colors

1. Open the graph view (Ctrl/Cmd + G)
2. Click the settings icon (gear)
3. Under Groups, add color rules:

Query	Color	What it highlights
tag:#type/entity/concept	Orange	Concept hubs — the high-connectivity nodes
tag:#type/entity/person	Yellow	People mentioned across sources
tag:#source/kiyosaki-rich-dad	Blue	All claims from one source
tag:#source/ibn-qayyim-aldaa-waldawaa	Green	All claims from another source
tag:#source/cross-vault	Red	Bridge concepts connecting sources
tag:#priority/core	Bright red	The most important claims

What the colored graph reveals

• Bridge concepts (red) sit between source clusters (blue, green) — they’re the cross-source connections
• Entity hubs (orange) have the most connections — they’re your brain’s high-traffic concepts
• Core claims (bright red) within a source cluster show the argument’s skeleton
• Isolated nodes are orphans the doctor agent should investigate

Recommended color schemes

By source — see how sources cluster and where bridges connect them:

• Each source gets its own color
• source/cross-vault bridges get a contrasting color (red works well)
• Entities get a neutral color (gray or white)

By evidence type — see how the brain argues:

• backing/textual + backing/transmitted = scriptural evidence (green)
• backing/empirical = data-driven evidence (blue)
• backing/experiential = anecdotal evidence (orange)
• backing/rational = logical arguments (purple)

By certainty — see the confidence landscape:

• certainty/established = solid ground (green)
• certainty/argued = active debate (yellow)
• certainty/speculative = uncertain territory (red)

CSS tag coloring

The brain ships with a CSS snippet (distillary-tags.css) that colors tags in note bodies:

Tag	Color	Meaning
priority/core	Red	Central to the argument
priority/key	Orange	Important supporting point
certainty/speculative	Light red	Author is guessing
certainty/established	Green	Settled fact
stance/endorsed	Blue	Author believes this
stance/criticized	Salmon	Author rejects this
type/entity/*	Dark orange	Entity notes

Enable it: Settings → Appearance → CSS snippets → toggle distillary-tags.

Ghost links (concepts mentioned but not yet entity pages) appear as italic orange dashed underlines — they’re exploration suggestions.