Thinking it through

Decisions from earlier ideas

When you hand an idea off, Walden keeps what it ruled out and what it settled. If a later idea goes against one of those, Walden asks about it in the margin, so nobody decides the same thing twice without noticing.

What Walden keeps

When an idea is handed off, Walden keeps two things from all of its written pages:

• Everything under Not doing. What the idea left out on purpose.
• Every settled unknown with a note on what was decided. One settled without a word on what was decided isn’t kept.

Hand the idea off again and the record follows what it says then. Move it to another project and its decisions move with it. While it’s reopened, or deleted, nothing it decided is brought up.

A question from a coding agent’s build that you settle or rule out after the hand-off is kept the same way. See Following a build.

The question in the margin

As you write an idea that’s still open, Walden checks what you changed against what earlier handed-off ideas decided. It looks only in the same workspace, and only within the idea’s project when it has one. When a passage plainly goes against an earlier decision, a question appears beside it in the margin, marked Decided before:

• “You ruled this out in March. What has changed?”
• “You settled this in March. What has changed?”

Under the question is what was decided, in the words it was decided in, labelled Not doing or Decided, then a link to the idea it came from and the day that idea was handed off.

It only asks

A question from an earlier decision changes nothing on your page, doesn’t count toward how far the idea has got, and never stops you. Maybe the earlier call still stands and this idea should change. Maybe something has changed and this idea is the new call. That’s yours to say, and the question gets one of two answers:

• Add as an unknown. It becomes an open unknown on the page, to settle, leave to the builder or rule out like any other. See Unknowns and Not doing.
• Dismiss. It goes.

Either way, the same decision isn’t raised again on that page. Clear the reader’s questions in the second reader leaves these questions alone: they aren’t a reader’s, so each is answered by hand.

Look a decision up

To ask what was decided before, use the chat beside All ideas. Ask something like What did we decide about billing? It reads what earlier ideas ruled out or settled and says which idea each came from. See Chat.

A coding agent building an idea looks decisions up too. Before it makes a product decision, it checks what earlier ideas in the same project ruled out or settled. See Coding agents.