# Vault Hygiene Philosophy

Why do vaults decay, and how does the Gardener fix it?

## The problem: entropy

As a vault grows, it naturally tends toward chaos (entropy).

- We forget to add tags.
- We create duplicate concepts under different names (e.g., `[[AI]]` vs `[[Artificial Intelligence]]`).
- We lose the "latent" connections between ideas.

This Vault Decay makes your knowledge harder to retrieve and reduces the value of your second brain over time.

## Proactive vs reactive maintenance

Most users strictly do reactive maintenance: they fix a link only when they notice it is broken.

The Gardener inserts a layer of proactive maintenance.

1. Plan: It scans the vault and creates a Gardener Plan.
2. Review: You (the human) review the plan.
3. Apply: The approved structural changes are applied in bulk.

## The ontology plan

The Gardener does not guess; it follows your ontology. It looks at where you have stored previous concepts to determine where new ones belong.

- If you put all companies in `Entities/Companies`, it will suggest moving new company notes there.
- If you tag people with #person, it will suggest that tag for new contacts.

## Privacy and safety

The Gardener works extensively with your vault's structure, but it never modifies your files without explicit consent. Every action it proposes is held in a "Gardening Plan" for your review.

This "Human-in-the-Loop" model is a core pillar of our security architecture. For a deep dive into how we protect your vault from unintended modifications and external threats, see our **[Security and Robustness Standards](../../devs/security-and-robustness.md)**.
