Link

A Link is a relationship you draw between two Notes. You create one simply by referencing one Note from another. The Link, not the Note, is the unit of meaning: it says these two ideas belong together.

Links are bidirectional

Every Link you create is visible from both ends. Connect Note A to Note B, and B gains a backlink to A for free. This is what lets you arrive at an idea from any direction; the Network has no single front door. The link is still directed, though, and that asymmetry carries meaning: see Directionality.

Name the relationship

A bare Link records that two ideas connect; a named Link records how. Often the reason for a Link is worth a word: contradicts, extends, exemplifies, depends-on. A Link with that context carries an argument, not just an association, and a Network of labelled Links can be walked like reasoning rather than browsed like a pile. Three or four relationship names beat a sprawling ontology; see Directionality for why a named Link only makes sense one way.

Drawing a Link is the thinking

Adding a Link is never mechanical. To draw one you must notice a relationship and judge it significant, which is the intellectual work itself. Capturing Notes fills the system; drawing Links activates it.

Next: the Network, what your Links add up to.