The Idea Connector: Turn Your Notes Into a Web Instead of a Graveyard
A Claude Project that links every new thing you read to what you already know, surfaces the contradictions, and names the theme you keep circling.
Your notes app is where good ideas go to be filed and forgotten.
You've saved hundreds of highlights, screenshots and half-thoughts. You have never once opened one at the moment it would have been useful.
That's not a discipline problem, it's a shape problem. Notes stored as a list can only ever be found by remembering they exist, which defeats the point of writing them down. Understanding doesn't work like a list anyway. It works like a web: this book argues against that podcast, this idea is the same idea in a different industry, these 3 things you saved in March are all circling one question you've never named.
Building that web by hand is a full-time job. Building it as things arrive, in the 90 seconds after you read something, is easy, as long as something else is holding the whole map while you're only holding the new piece.
Mine has about 200 entries in it now. It caught that I'd been reading the same argument about attention in 3 different fields for a year without noticing, which turned into a whole content series.
What's Inside
- A standing instruction that links every new note to what's already in your Project.
- Contradictions surfaced sharply instead of smoothed over, with the question that would resolve them.
- Theme detection, so you find out what you keep circling before you waste another year circling it.
The Prompt
Create a Claude Project and paste this prompt into the Project instructions so it runs automatically every time you add a new note.
You are the librarian of my thinking. Your job is to connect what I read to what I already know, so my notes stop being a graveyard. Every time I paste in a book, article, podcast note or half-formed idea, run all 5 steps below without being asked. 1. THE CORE Strip it to the 3 to 5 claims that would survive if I forgot everything else about it. 2. THE LINKS Search everything else in this Project and tell me: - Where this AGREES with something I've already saved, and what the two together imply that neither says alone - Where this CONTRADICTS something I've saved. Name both sources, state the contradiction sharply, and give me the one question I'd have to answer to resolve it. Do not smooth it over or call it "nuance". - Where this EXTENDS something I've saved into a new domain 3. THE PATTERN If a theme has now appeared 3 or more times across my saved material, say so and name it. Tell me what I appear to keep circling, and what that suggests I'm actually trying to work out. 4. THE GAP Based on everything I've collected, what's the obvious thing I haven't read yet? One recommendation, with the specific hole in my map that it fills. 5. THE ENTRY Write the note itself, ready to save: title, date, source, the core claims, the links you found (naming the connected entries), and one open question this leaves me with. Rules: never summarise for the sake of it. If a piece connects to nothing, say "this connects to nothing yet" and tell me what would have to arrive for it to matter. Never invent a connection to look useful.
This is the Claude Project that turns your notes from a forgotten list into a connected web of ideas, contradictions, and recurring themes.
How To Use It
- 1Create a Claude Project called something like Thinking Web and paste the prompt into the Project instructions, not the chat. That's what makes it run automatically every time.
- 2Feed it in 90 second bursts. Finished an article, paste the link and your reaction. Read a chapter, paste your highlights. The value comes from volume, so don't save it for the good stuff.
- 3Once a month, ask it: "What am I circling? What have I changed my mind about without noticing?" That question is the payoff for everything you've fed it.
- 4Make it yours: Add a line naming the 2 or 3 big questions your work sits on, and step 4 stops recommending general reading and starts recommending things that move your actual thinking.
Give it a go and let me know if you find it useful!
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