Atlas

This is how the system feels.

The Standard Garden is not built with APIs and databases—it is grown from seeds, soil, and sunlight. This Atlas strips away technical jargon and reveals the true nature of our ecosystem.

1. THE SOWING (Inputs)

How life enters the system.

The Open Gate (Web)

The common entrance. Anyone can walk in, drop a seed (text), and watch it grow instantly. No walls, no barriers, no questions asked. Just pure creation.

The Wind (Email/Bots)

Seeds carried from afar. You don’t have to be in the garden to plant; you just send it on the wind, and it finds soil. Messages become notes, thoughts become specimens.

The Graft (Folios/CLI)

Taking a branch from an existing tree (your local Obsidian vault, your file system) and binding it to the Garden so it grows in public. Your private forest becomes part of the shared landscape.

2. THE BEDROCK (Infrastructure)

The invisible foundation that holds the weight.

The Soil (Storage)

Where the roots take hold. It is deep, cheap, and fertile. Every note planted here has room to grow, fed by R2’s vast underground reserves. The soil never runs dry.

The Key (Authentication)

We do not use passwords (walls). We use Keys. You prove who you are once, and the gate remembers you. Email-based magic links—no memorization, no friction, just proof of identity.

The Mycelium (AI)

The living intelligence underground. It touches every root, finding connections between plants that look different above ground but drink the same water. Notes that seem unrelated on the surface are joined below by invisible threads. The network thinks, learns, and suggests.

3. THE ALCHEMY (The Press)

The magic that turns raw text into beauty.

The Six Temperaments (The Standards)

The DNA of the plant. Every seed carries one of six signatures that determines how it expresses itself. You can choose, or let the Garden decide based on what you’re planting.

1. The Construct (International/Swiss)
   Rigid. Mathematical. Precise.
   Clean lines, grid-based layout, Helvetica precision. Use for technical documentation, minimalist design, architectural thinking.
   CSS Class: standard-international

2. The Blueprint (Technical)
   Manual. Monospace. Safety-first.
   Graph paper background, IBM Plex Mono typeface, safety orange accents. Use for repair manuals, code documentation, how-to guides.
   CSS Class: standard-technical

3. The Letter (Humanist)
   Warm. Organic. Personal.
   Cream paper, soft serifs, gentle curves. Use for poems, letters, personal essays, warm storytelling.
   CSS Class: standard-humanist

4. The Chronicle (Editorial)
   Authority. Journalism. Contrast.
   Newspaper-style, drop caps, high contrast Georgia serifs. Use for essays, long-form journalism, authoritative writing.
   CSS Class: standard-editorial

5. The Treatise (Academic)
   Scholarly. Marginal. Annotated.
   Aged paper, sidenotes, red corrections, iron gall ink. Use for research papers, academic work, thesis writing.
   CSS Class: standard-academic

6. The Exhibit (Gallery)
   Invisible. Spatial. Minimalist.
   Receded captions, maximum white space, content-first. Use for visual portfolios, photo essays, artwork presentation.
   CSS Class: standard-gallery

The Signature (Configuration)

The Gardener’s unique hand. Your specific colors, your chosen fonts, your spacing preferences—the marks that say “this came from my garden.” While the Standards provide structure, your Signature adds personality.

4. THE FLORA (Outputs)

What the world sees.

The Specimen (The Note)

A single, perfect expression of thought. Standing alone, beautiful, and self-contained. Each note is a specimen—categorized, preserved, displayed with care. Whether it’s a recipe, a repair log, or a research paper, it stands with dignity.

The Landscape (The Profile)

Not a list, but a terrain. When you view a gardener’s profile, you see their full landscape—the variety and density of their thinking.

The Groves (Clusters)

Similar trees grow together. The Landscape automatically groups “Coffee” notes into a grove and “Code” notes into another. Natural clustering emerges from content, not manual organization.

The Canopy (Gravity)

The tallest, densest trees (High Quality) rise above the scrub (Low Effort). Good work is visible. Effort is rewarded with prominence. The Canopy sorts itself by substance.

The Estate (Custom Domain)

When a Gardener claims a plot of land and names it. yourgarden.com instead of standard.garden/you. Your own soil, your own address, but still part of the ecosystem.

5. THE SEASONS (Lifecycle)

The natural cycle of time.

The Annuals (Anonymous Notes)

They bloom quickly, offer their beauty, and then die back into the earth (Compost) to feed the soil. They are ephemeral—7 days from planting to composting. Perfect for quick shares, temporary thoughts, experiments. Not meant to last, but valuable in their season.

The Perennials (Member Notes)

They have deep roots. They survive the winter. They stand for years, becoming landmarks in the Garden. These notes are permanent—as long as you tend your account, they live. Your collected body of work, your legacy.

6. THE CYCLES (Natural Processes)

Composting (Expiration)

Anonymous notes return to the earth after 7 days. Their essence feeds the soil—their views, their patterns, their existence teaches the Mycelium. Nothing is truly lost; it just transforms.

Pruning (Deletion)

Sometimes a Gardener must cut back growth. Private notes can be removed, but they leave traces—the Mycelium remembers the connections, even if the specimen is gone.

Grafting (Publishing from Obsidian)

The art of taking a branch from your private forest and binding it to the public Garden. One click, and your local note becomes a public specimen. The graft is seamless—bidirectional, living, always in sync.

7. THE DISCOVERY (Finding & Connection)

The Mycelium Network

Underground, the AI touches every root. When you read a note about “fermentation,” the Mycelium whispers: “There’s another about bread, and one about kimchi, and one about bioreactors.” Connections emerge from content, not tags.

The Daily Harvest

Each morning, the Garden selects specimens for the Daily page—notes that deserve attention, patterns that emerged overnight, connections the Mycelium discovered. Not algorithmic feeding; curated discovery.

The Random Walk

Sometimes the best way to explore a garden is to wander without direction. The Random button drops you somewhere unexpected—a stranger’s repair manual, a forgotten poem, a technical note from 2023. Serendipity is built in.

8. THE TOOLS (How Gardeners Work)

The Command Palette (The Compass)

Power users speak in commands. Type :: and the Compass opens—a gate that lets you create, search, navigate, and configure without leaving the keyboard. The Garden responds to protocol.

The Atelier (The Workshop)

Simple, distraction-free writing. Markdown is the seed format—plain text with structure. The Press turns it into beauty, but at the source, it’s just text. Portable, eternal, yours.

The Lens (Search)

Full-text search (FTS5) across all public specimens. Find by content, by title, by fragment. The Garden indexes everything, remembers everything, surfaces everything.

9. THE ECONOMY (Sustainability)

Free Tier: The Commons

• Anonymous: Unlimited planting, 7-day lifespan (Annuals)
• Accounts: 10 permanent specimens (Perennials)

Paid Tier: The Estate ($4/month)

• Unlimited permanent specimens
• Private specimens (not public)
• Custom domain support
• Priority support from the Gardeners

The Math

• 10,000 users cost <$200/month (Cloudflare edge efficiency)
• 1,000 paid users = $4,000/month revenue
• $3,800/month profit = sustainable, no VC needed
• This is a utility, not a startup

10. THE PHILOSOPHY (Why This Exists)

Speed is Respect

10 seconds from thought → beautiful URL. No account required. No configuration. Just paste and share. We respect your time.

Beauty is Default

Classical typography applied automatically. Your content looks professional instantly. 500 years of design refinement in every note.

Friction is the Enemy

Every step removed is a gift. Anonymous posting. One-click publishing. Auto-copied URLs. Seamless flows.

Sustainability is Architecture

Edge delivery. Zero servers. Minimal JavaScript. Efficiency isn’t just ethics—it’s survival. Low costs mean permanent free tier.

Discovery is Bonus

The utility works alone (paste → link). The Mycelium is enhancement. Backlinks, related notes, the network—all extras. Core value never depends on network effects.

Composting is Natural

Not everything needs to last forever. Temporary notes are part of the design. They create urgency (upgrade funnel) and reduce costs (storage optimization). The cycle is intentional.

11. THE METAPHOR (Why “Garden”?)

We could have called this “CloudPaste” or “NoteBin” or “ShareMD.” But those names describe function, not feeling.

Garden describes how it works:

• You plant seeds (notes)
• They grow in public view (rendered beautifully)
• The mycelium connects them (AI discovery)
• Annuals die and compost (temporary notes)
• Perennials last years (permanent notes)
• The landscape shows your full terrain (profile)
• You tend your plot (manage your content)

This isn’t a database with a web interface. It’s an ecosystem with natural laws.

12. THE INVITATION

You are not a “user.” You are a Gardener.

You don’t “post content.” You plant specimens.

You don’t “manage data.” You tend your landscape.

The Garden is not software. It’s soil. It’s alive. It grows with you.

Welcome to Standard Garden. Let’s grow something worth keeping. 🌱

Technical Translation (For Developers)

If you need to map Atlas concepts back to implementation, here’s the Rosetta Stone.

Canonical reference: AGENTS.md is the single source of truth for architecture and file locations.

This Atlas is not marketing copy—it’s the internal language we use to think about the system. When we build features, we ask: “Does this serve the Garden’s natural laws?” Not: “Does this increase engagement metrics?”

Last Updated: February 8, 2025
Maintained By: The Standard Garden Community
Status: Living Document (grows with the Garden)