---
name: reference-steward-maps-home
description: Maps — artifacts the steward reads directly to orient — live in ~/dotfiles/maps (git-tracked) and are symlinked to the Desktop; write them there, never straight onto the Desktop.
metadata:
  type: reference
---

A **map** is an artifact addressed to the steward and read *directly* by him: a
current-state dashboard, a corpus index, a reading list, an architectural sketch,
an audit he opens rather than asks about. Distinct from session records (written
for the next session) and memory files (written for the next Claude) — David does
not browse the memory dir, so a map filed there is a map that is not read.

**Home:** `~/dotfiles/maps/` (git-tracked, pushed with dotfiles). Each map is
symlinked back to its original Desktop path, so the Desktop is unchanged — same
names, same place. Tidying the Desktop now deletes a symlink, not the map.

**The rule:** write a map into `~/dotfiles/maps/` and symlink it to the Desktop —
never the other way round. A map authored straight onto the Desktop is untracked
from the moment it exists.

**Enforcement:** `wake-digest.py` reports any top-level Desktop `.md` that is not
a symlink into `maps/` (`stray_maps()`/`is_homed()`, 3 controls). It reports only
— the Desktop is the steward's, and nothing moves without him.

**Why it exists:** `arc-current-state-2026-05-07.md` was a live ARC dashboard the
steward read to orient. It lived only on the Desktop, went with a tidy-up, and
its only trace was a `MEMORY-reference.md` link that read as noise for three
months — I nearly deleted it as a stale pointer. The census then found **four
more** in the same condition (Making-Sequence architecture + reading list among
them, load-bearing for live corpus work), every one with zero copies anywhere.
The cause was structural: code, session records and memories were all durable,
and the one artifact class addressed to the person the system is *for* had no
home. Steward-directed 2026-07-28; all five relocated byte-identically under a
checksum gate with a positive control.

Related: [[feedback-resurface-banked-notes-before-rederiving]] (the register that
holds ARC's *content* successor is [[project-arc-open-work-register]]; the map's
*function* — something he opens and orients by — had no successor until this).