1000 Antinet Manual

The operating manual

Filing rules

How to compute an address, the one decision you make every time you file, and why you will never renumber a card.

Anatomy of an address

1060/1a1

The four digits — meaning

The 46 disciplines of the core list, fixed in advance. This is the only place taxonomy lives: 1060 is Writing and rhetoric, and will not move. You never invent one with a card in your hand — a row of your own is earned over months, and earning one never moves a row that already exists.

After the slash — position

Pure address. Answers “where does this card physically sit?” and nothing else. It grows as you file, and it never means anything.

One slash, ever. After it, segments alternate number → letter → number → letter. The type switch is the level marker, which is why no further punctuation is needed: consecutive digits form one segment, consecutive letters form one segment. So 3021/50aa reads unambiguously as 50 → aa.

Computing the next address

  1. Decide which card the new one hangs off. Call it the parent.
  2. Look at the parent’s last segment. Ends in a number → append a letter. Ends in a letter → append a number.
  3. Take the next unused one. Done — permanently.

Child or sibling

These are not two operations. They are the same operation with a different parent — which is what makes the system runnable at 2am with a card in your hand.

You wantParent isFrom 1060/1a
Child digs into the card the card itself 1060/1a1
Sibling continues past it the card’s parent — drop the last segment 1060/1b

The question to ask at the drawer: does this continue the card in my hand, or dig into it? Continue → step back one segment and append. Dig in → append directly.

A worked sequence

Seven cards filed behind 1060 Writing and rhetoric, in the order they were written. Watch card 6.

Order written

  1. 1060/1 Persuasion — HUB
  2. 1060/1a Definition of a thesis
  3. 1060/1a1 Thesis vs. hypothesis
  4. 1060/1b Ethos, pathos, logos
  5. 1060/1b1 Aristotle, Rhetoric Bk I
  6. 1060/1a2 A thesis must be contestable
  7. 1060/2 Rhetoric ≠ sophistry

Order in the drawer

  1. 1060 Writing and rhetoric — guide card
  2. 1060/1 Persuasion — HUB
  3. 1060/1a Definition of a thesis
  4. 1060/1a1 Thesis vs. hypothesis
  5. 1060/1a2 A thesis must be contestable
  6. 1060/1b Ethos, pathos, logos
  7. 1060/1b1 Aristotle, Rhetoric Bk I
  8. 1060/2 Rhetoric ≠ sophistry

Card 6 was written sixth and sits fourth. It slid between two cards that already existed, and nothing moved to accommodate it. That is the whole payoff of the alternating scheme — and the reason you must never renumber: a card’s address is the only stable thing other cards can point at.

How each address was derived

#ParentEnds inSo appendAddress
1 1060 the discipline — no branch yet number → 1 1060/1
2 1060/1 number 1 letter → a 1060/1a
3 1060/1a letter a number → 1 1060/1a1
4 1060/1 number 1 letter → b (a taken) 1060/1b
5 1060/1b letter b number → 1 1060/1b1
6 1060/1a letter a number → 2 (1 taken) 1060/1a2
7 1060 the discipline number → 2 (1 taken) 1060/2

Inserting between two cards

There is no between. There is only behind — and behind turns out to be enough, because a child always sits between its parent and its parent’s next sibling.

To place a card between X and the card after it: append to X. Sorting does the rest.

The one genuine limit: nothing can sit between a card and its own first child. That gap is closed, and you will never need it, because sibling order carries no meaning — 1060/1b is not “prior to” 1060/1c. When sequence genuinely matters, that is a hub card’s job, not the number’s.

Hub cards, and the other two indexes

If the number cannot tell you what a card says, something else has to find it. Three devices do that work, and they are not interchangeable.

DeviceHoldsLivesRewritten
Hub card A list of addresses on one theme — a switchboard, not prose In place, at the theme’s centre of gravity Freely, often
Keyword index Term → one or two entry-point addresses. Deliberately sparse Its own drawer, alphabetical Rarely, by addition
Bibliographic card One source, its details, and the cards drawn from it Its own drawer, by author Never — append only

A hub is the one card you are allowed to rewrite, because it holds no thinking — only pointers. That licence is what lets it collapse the drawer separation the four-digit numbers impose: a Persuasion hub can point into 1060 Writing and rhetoric, 2080 Communication and media and 5062 Marketing and branding on the same line, and no filing scheme could have put those three together. Keep it a list. The moment a hub contains arguments, it has become a card that belongs somewhere and you have lost your index.

Never