Start with the material
A digital garden should make it easier to keep and connect useful ideas. Its first job is to publish readable pages. A database, vector index, or agent runtime is not a prerequisite for that.
Make change inexpensive
Markdown keeps the writing portable. Validated metadata keeps collections consistent. A static build makes the published result inspectable before anyone reads it.
Leave useful seams
Search has a provider boundary. Related content has deterministic rules. Backlinks are a serialisable index. These are small places to introduce more sophisticated behaviour when there is evidence that it is needed.
The notes-as-a-graph experiment describes one direction for that evolution.
Publication note
This is an editorial seed article prepared for the JGarden MVP. It should be reviewed before public publication.