polaris-aeterna/loom-notes/skill

Fill-in notes — the Loom method

Produce study notes that a learner both reads (passive intake) and fills (active recall). The source is the answer key; the notes are the scaffold. Lead with a spine (one organizing idea) so a chapter becomes a single story, not a transcript.

Pipeline

1. Read the source; find the spine. Skim the chapter/PDF, then name the ONE

organizing idea and reorganize around it — a dictionary, an engine list, a single theorem the rest orbits. Do not transcribe section by section if a better shape exists. (Concentration → "8 engines"; Nonlinear Algebra → the algebra↔geometry dictionary.)

1. Scaffold. Copy template/ (it brings loom.cls + a starter main.tex).

Put the master spine on the front page (a cheat-table / map, partly blank), then \input one file per section under sections/.

1. Draft each section in the Loom grammar (see the table below).
2. Engineer the gaps (~70% read / 30% fill). Read reference/method.md. Blank the

high-value thinking moves, never so much that reading breaks.

1. Compile + verify. latexmk -xelatex main (or xelatex twice). Fix the known

reference/pitfalls.md traps. Rasterize a page (ghostscript) and read it back to check the look before declaring done.

The Loom grammar — what goes where

Full command reference: reference/loom-commands.md.

Honest scoping

• The notes restate results from the source. For personal study this is fine; before

making notes that closely track a copyrighted book public, attribute clearly and consider an original example instead (see the repo README's note).

• Keep the source's numbering in the knot title (e.g. Theorem 4.1 (… Thm. 2.16)); the

bold auto-numbers are local to the notes.

See also

• ../template/main.tex — blank starter (a live cheat-sheet of every device).
• ../examples/nonlinear-algebra/ — full fill-in treatment (\fillin, yourturn).
• ../examples/concentration-of-measure/ — proof-skeleton style (\TODO).
• ../examples/demo/ — every visual feature on two pages.