Reflexes

Overview

By the time you sit down with your coffee, something has already read the night's mail. A reflex is what runs by itself: when something arrives, it reads it and works out what it might mean — and then stops, because everything it produces is a proposal .

What it applies is the same judgement these docs teach you. It asks which node the item hangs on , searches what you already keep before it proposes anything new, and leaves routine alone. A reflex is your filing judgement running ahead of you — which is why teaching it is worth more than any other setting.

One comes with every account, and it is always on: the inbox reflex . It reads everything that arrives — mail, events, what other systems push in, the thoughts you put down — and works out one proposal per subject. Two mails and the meeting they are about are one matter, so they become one proposal; a bug report and a quote from the same client are two.

It waits a moment before it looks, so what arrives together is read together. A reply in a thread it already has a proposal for goes straight to that proposal, so the proposal never lags behind the conversation it is about. Newsletters, receipts and other items that ask nothing of you get no proposal at all: they are marked as looked at and stay in your inbox.

Basics

Teach one

The inbox reflex has one instruction box that takes plain sentences, and they apply from the next item that arrives. It already knows the general rules — what earns a node, what hangs where — so what belongs here is what it cannot work out: your exceptions, and your habits. A heading per kind of item keeps it readable:

• Mail — "mail from the school is Family, and hangs on the school node", "never draft a reply to a newsletter".
• Calendar — "the Tuesday sync never needs a task", "interviews always get a prep block, due the day before".
• Signals — "alerts from staging need nothing", "a GitHub issue hangs on the project it names".

Several mailboxes, or several kinds of signal that each want something else? Give each a heading of its own in the same box — "Mail on work@", "GitHub issues". It is the one place the reflex takes its instructions from.

What you let go of writes the instructions. A proposal you let go of for the same reason every week is one sentence here — that is the loop that makes month three quieter than week one. And keep the boundary with context : an instruction says what to do with what arrives; what is true about you everywhere belongs in the note every reflex and every chat reads. When you send one of its proposals back with a remark that holds for good, the reflex proposes the sentence for this box itself, under the heading it belongs to, and it applies once you carry the proposal out.

Ask it to look again

You can ask for a fresh look by hand on any item, and it happens at once — an archive is a verdict on what you saw, not a refusal to look again. When an item landed in the wrong proposal, say so when you send the proposal back: the item leaves it and is looked at on its own.

Know what it may touch

A reflex carries scopes: what it may read, and what it may propose. Read access covers what it needs to judge with — your nodes, your mail, your calendar, your context note. There is no scope that lets it change something without asking, because a write is a proposal here.

The inbox reflex's scopes are fixed to what reading an inbox needs, which is why its settings are an instruction box and nothing else. A reflex you write yourself, under Settings → Thinking , is where you choose them.

FAQ

Can I make my own reflex?

Yes, under Settings → Thinking , where you choose its trigger, its instructions and what it may touch. The inbox reflex is what an account starts with, and teaching it is still where most of the room to move is.

Why did nothing happen for an item?

Proposing nothing is an answer. Routine rhythm — a daily standup, a block you made for yourself, a newsletter — is read and deliberately left alone.

Where do I see what it proposed?

Under Proposals , the first tab of your Inbox , and on the page of every item a proposal is about. A proposal is a page, not a conversation: say under Anything else? what you would have different, or ask a chat to change it.