agentbull/ankole/idea-lineage

Idea lineage

Answer "how did my thinking about X change?" from stored evidence: when the idea first appeared, when it became sharp, what it displaced, what it contradicts, and which version is alive now.

Boundaries

• One idea per run. When one phrase covers several distinct ideas, ask which

one before you synthesize.

• A metric, role, or status history of an entity is not lineage. Use delta

with the entity and a time window, and say the difference.

• A broad map across many ideas is not lineage. Use synthesize with that

question directly; page-level merge and consolidation belong to background memory maintenance, not to you.

• Read-only by default. Write nothing unless the person asks for a saved

artifact after seeing the answer; then synthesize owns the durable page.

Method

1. Resolve the target. Restate the idea in one sentence. recall the

exact phrase and its variants; check entity when the idea has a named page. Takes come back with holders — a take belongs to its holder and is not automatically the owner's current view.

1. Gather evidence. Read the top pages behind the strongest hits with

pod_get_page, passing each page UUID as id and level: "L2". delta over the idea's active period shows when claims were superseded or expired — reversals live there. Prefer few high-quality sources over a long unsorted pile.

1. Classify the moments into seven buckets:

• First mention — the earliest dated evidence.
• Best articulation — the clearest expression, not necessarily the

newest.

• Current live version — the most recent version that still stands.
• Reversals — where the stance changed direction.
• Contradictions — claims that cannot both hold. Temporal supersession

is not contradiction.

• Abandoned branches — variants that appeared, then lost support or

were rejected.

• Related ideas — nearby concepts that shaped or inherited parts.

1. Write the answer in the shape below, proportional to the evidence. Do

not smooth a messy history into a clean arc.

Output shape

## Current live version
[1–3 sentences, with confidence: high / medium / low]
 
## Lineage
-First mention: [date] — [claim] (page, "short quote")
-Best articulation: [date] — [claim] (page, "short quote")
-Turning point: [date] — [what changed] (page)
 
## Reversals and contradictions
-[before/after evidence, or "No clear evidence found"]
 
## Abandoned branches
-[branch] — [why it reads as abandoned, with evidence]
 
## Evidence gaps
-[bucket] — [what was checked, what is missing]

Collapse sections for short answers, but keep the distinctions.

Quality rules

• Quote exact text for first mention and best articulation.
• Give dates when the evidence has them; write "undated" instead of guessing.
• The person's direct statements are the highest authority on their own

current view.

• An empty bucket says "no clear evidence found" and what was checked. Never

patch a gap with a plausible story, and never invent an abandoned branch because it makes the story better.

• Mark confidence low when the evidence is one weak snippet, an undated page,

or a fuzzy semantic match.