Learn MYOS
Systems, entities, areas and tasks
MYOS has one idea and three nouns. The idea is that a system is a repeatable set of moves, and the nouns are what those moves act on: entities, areas and tasks.
The system is the moves, not the folders
Most productivity setups are a shape you are asked to maintain. MYOS is a loop you run.
Something lands. It becomes a task. You work the task with your assistant. The task is archived. What it produced gets folded back into the files that hold your long-term memory of that work.
That loop is the whole system. Learn it once and every part of the vault behaves the way you expect, including the parts you add yourself two years from now.
Entities
An entity is anything significant enough to show up in more than one context. A client, a person, a project, a course, a piece of equipment, a business.
Significant things get their own file. Everything else references that file by name instead of repeating the detail. The entity file is where detail accumulates, so the notes that mention it stay short.
The test is simple. If you would ever ask "where are we up to with that", it is an entity.
Areas
An area is a work stream: a job, a side project, a study commitment, a domain of personal admin. Each area is a folder with two files in it, an entity file that acts as its landing page and a CLAUDE.md that tells your assistant how to work in there.
Areas are the homes. Everything else has to live somewhere, and the area is where it lives. Areas covers how they nest when a work stream contains more than one distinct thing.
Tasks
A task is a unit of work with a file. It carries an id, a status, a priority, and a link to the entity or area it belongs to.
Tasks are also the record of what happened. Anything that lands in the vault comes from a task, which is what makes the system answerable later. The task system covers why that rule is strict.
Why it is layered
Each layer summarises the one below it. The short profile that loads every session summarises the longer profile files behind it. An area's CLAUDE.md summarises the area. An area's landing page summarises the work inside it.
Your assistant enters at the top of whatever it is pointed at and only goes deeper when the question requires it. That is why a vault with three years of material in it still loads fast, and why nothing has to be deleted to keep it usable.
Data flows downward. Detail files feed summaries, summaries feed context files, and it never runs the other way. That one rule is what stops the same fact existing in four places with three different versions.
Next: The task system. Or see what ships in the kit.