hypothesize

name: hypothesize description: Extract falsifiable hypotheses from a paper or research source. Use when the human says "distill this paper", "what are the key claims", or shares an academic paper/article for deep analysis.

hypothesize

When to use

• "distill this paper" or similar
• Human shares a paper, preprint, or research article for analysis
• Human asks for key claims, hypotheses, or falsifiable predictions from a source

Process

1. Read the full paper (URL, PDF, or pasted text)
2. Retrieve knowledge neighborhood — search existing knowledge for related concepts, claims, and patterns using 4-surface retrieval (lexical, structural, semantic, temporal). This primes cross-domain connections.
3. SUPER IMPORTANT: Assess ALL primary authors' work history and ALL primary references for relevance to the user's broader work. Identify ideas worth capturing.
4. Create the source note in superpaper/sources/<topic>/ with: title, authors, abstract summary, methodology notes. Give every key finding and quotable passage a ^block-id so it's independently embeddable (![[source#^finding-1]]).
5. Extract atoms aggressively (atomic-first). Every distinct finding, method, framework, and quotable claim from the paper deserves its own note — not just hypotheses. A key finding → its own note linked to the source. A novel method → its own note. A quote by an author → its own note linked to their people/ entry. The more atoms, the more potential cross-domain bridges.
6. Extract 3–5 falsifiable hypotheses from the paper's claims and broader ideas gathered that could address limitations of the work/area under consideration or fix gaps in the current paradigm.
7. For each hypothesis worth remembering, create a claim note in superpaper/concepts/:
   • type: claim, confidence: 0.4–0.7
   • Include predictions ("if true, expect…") and embed the evidence passage (![[source#^finding]])
   • Tags: #domain/... + #topic/...
   • Link to the source note and any related existing knowledge notes
8. Compose a hub note if the paper produced 4+ atoms — embed the atomic notes with thin connective prose explaining how the findings relate. This becomes the "processed paper" that reads like a document but traces every claim to its source.
9. Link everything: source note links to claim notes, claim notes link to each other and to related existing knowledge. Update 1–3 existing notes to link back (distributed write).

Outputs

• 1 source note in superpaper/sources/<topic>/
• 1+ evidence notes (key excerpts) in superpaper/.evidence/
• 2+ claim notes (hypotheses) in superpaper/concepts/
• All cross-linked with distributed write

Done when

• Hypotheses are testable and falsifiable
• Claim notes have predictions ("if true, expect…")
• Source note has proper source: frontmatter
• All notes have 2+ wiki-links with distributed write (existing notes updated to link back)
• Tags are specific (#domain/... + #topic/...), not broad