Designing Ideas: How Jonathan Splitlog uses the LYT frameworks (Obsidian)

Jonathan Splitlog’s Obsidian system is built to turn scattered reading, listening, and conversations into “mature,” evergreen knowledge—organized through a stack of maps-of-content (MOCs) that always trace back to a single home note. The core move is structural: everything starts from a top-level home note, then fans out only into a small set of index-style home maps, each of which links to deeper MOCs and ultimately to source-driven notes. That design matters because it prevents ideas from becoming isolated bookmarks; instead, they accumulate into coherent, retrievable bodies of work.

At the top sits a “home note” that functions as the launching point for the entire system. From there, the only outward links go to “home maps” (indexes). One of Splitlog’s key home maps is “interest,” which acts as the stitching layer between different kinds of notes: source notes, developing notes, and more “mature” evergreen notes. The interest MOC is organized by categories—such as “computers and technology”—and each category links to further MOCs. For a capstone-focused thread, Splitlog worked on a specific MOC titled “mystical computation,” a research direction examining human-computer interaction through the lens of mysticism and spirituality.

The “mystical computation” MOC is described as both bottom-up and evergreen. Splitlog starts by taking notes from materials encountered over time, then later discovers which notes “belong” together under a home. As the MOC grows, it gains contextual scaffolding: it doesn’t just link to related ideas, it explains how those ideas connect to the central topic. Even if a note began life as something else—like “spatial awareness and digital environments”—the system allows that note to live under “mystical computation” by adding context that clarifies why the connection exists. This is the practical difference between collecting and synthesizing.

Source materials sit alongside the synthesis layer. Splitlog is “source driven,” beginning most idea formation with reading, listening, or conversations. In the “mystical computation” MOC, source notes are linked in a way that avoids repetitive manual linking; instead, backlinks help surface relevant sources automatically. A documentary example, “All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,” illustrates how a source note can be mined selectively: only one heading from the documentary note is embedded into the MOC, pulling a specific argument into the evergreen structure. In Obsidian terms, that’s done via heading embeds, so the MOC can reuse a precise slice of a larger source note.

Splitlog also contrasts this detailed, class-focused MOC with a more straightforward “computer history” MOC. The difference is not just topic; it’s how the system balances categories. “Computer history” is organized using the same top-level categories found in the home note—interest, concepts, sources, reference, education, writing, documentation, and meta notes—then uses the MOC practice to stitch original ideas to encountered materials and reference points. The end goal is publication-ready thinking: MOCs become springboards for writing, while term-definition notes (e.g., defining “mystical computation”) ensure the system remains usable when returning to the work later. The result is a workflow that reliably moves from raw inputs to structured, contextual knowledge that can be revisited and turned into output.