---
name: obsidian-vault-frontmatter-pass1-followups-2026-08-19
description: Read-only surfacing of the four items held back from frontmatter pass 1 — the 8 assurance strings, the prose tag, the three shape-disagreeing pairs, and the canonical path/flag split. Nothing decided, nothing changed.
type: reference
---

# Pass 1 follow-ups — surfaced, not decided

2026-08-19, at the jurist's request. **Read-only. No vault file was changed by this pass.**

## 1 · The 8 `assurance` strings

| value | note |
|---|---|
| `medium` | 08. Notes/Reflections/Parmenides Opening Fragment |
| `high` | 08. Notes/Tools & Workflow/Travel_Power_Kit_Evergoods_1L |
| `high` | 07. Learn/Reading/00. Master_Reading_Index |
| `high` | 07. Learn/Reading/01. Polestars/Berger — Ways of Seeing |
| `high` | 07. Learn/Reading/01. Polestars/Bachelard — The Poetics of Space |
| `high` | 07. Learn/Reading/01. Polestars/Alexander — The Timeless Way |
| `high` | 07. Learn/Reading/01. Polestars/Tolkien — The Long Road and the Ring |
| `high` | 99. Archive/07. Reading/Reading lists/Reading List — László Krasznahorkai |

Seven `high`, one `medium`. Five of eight are the Reading polestars — one cluster, one habit, not
eight independent decisions. The dict form's `evidence_level` takes a *kind* vocabulary
(experiential · design · practice · strong · mixed · cohort · narrative), so `high`/`medium` is a
**confidence scale that the dict has no slot for**.

## 2 · The prose `tag`

- **Note:** `08. Notes/CapableMind/thinking-mirror/agent-circles/agent-circle-ARC-survey-2026-04-23.md`
- **Value:** `tag: survey / scoping material; no spec commitments`
- **Other keys:** `created`, `status`, `origin`, `related`, `steward`, `executor-action`
- **Has no `tags` key at all.**

It is a scope disclaimer written into the key named `tag`. Nothing about it is a tag.

## 3 · The three pairs — same question as `note`/`notes`

**`domains` / `domain` — ONE thing, inconsistently typed.** Both classify the same way; the plural
is used where there are several values and the singular where there is one.
- `domain` (5): `personal_care` ×3, `language-ecology`, `beverage-ecology`
- `domains` (2): `[historically_informed_performance, violin_and_viola_technique, …]`, `[music, pedagogy, philosophy]`

**`periods` / `period` — TWO things.**
- `period` (6) is a **date range as prose**: `1912–1922` · `c. 800–400 BCE` · `2024-01-04 to 2024-02-05`
- `periods` (1) is a **structured schedule**: `[{name: Late Autumn 2025, months: [...], ...}]`

**`linked_note` / `linked_notes` — two things, and the singular belongs to a third key.**
- `linked_notes` (2) is a list of note names: `[00_Historical_Disease_Profiles_Index, Vaccination Conversations Index]`
- `linked_note` (1) is `[[2025-06-12]]` on a coffee log — **a daily-note link**, which is what
  `linked_daily_note` (2 notes) already means. Its nearest neighbour is not the key it was proposed
  to merge into.

## 4 · `canonical` — what it actually is, across 161 notes

| form | count |
|---|---|
| path-like string | **157** |
| real YAML boolean (`true`) | 3 |
| `'INDEX.yml'` (points at a non-markdown file) | 1 |

**The semantic split — the jurist's question.** Read by whether the value names the note's own file:

| reading | count |
|---|---|
| **self-descriptive** — names its own basename: *"I am canonical, and I live here"* | **91** |
| **pointer** — names a *different* note: *"the canonical version is over there"* | **66** |
| **pure flag** — bare `true`, no address | 3 |

So the key carries at least three jobs, and the two large ones are not variants of each other: one
is a self-assertion of authority, the other is a redirect away from it. A query filtering
`WHERE canonical` would treat all three as true.

**Pointer integrity, tested at four strictnesses:**

| | count |
|---|---|
| exact path match — correct as written | **6** |
| case-insensitive match only | 0 |
| **basename exists, path is wrong** (note moved) | **88** |
| **unresolvable — no note of that name anywhere** | **63** |

⚠ **A correction to what the executor reported earlier today.** The first pass at this used an
exact-path matcher and reported *"151 do not resolve"*. That number is right about the **paths** and
wrong about the **notes**: 88 of the 151 name a note that still exists at a different location. The
honest statement is **151 of 157 paths are stale as written, and 63 name nothing at all** — the
field is *stale*, not *dead*, and those are different problems with different remedies. The error
was a resolver too strict for the claim it was being cited for; caught by testing the resolver
before quoting its output.

**Not proposed, not decided.** Recorded so the governance-block conversation starts from the
substrate rather than from the census.