Atomic and autonomous

Zettelkasten notes are atomic and autonomous.

The principle of atomicity: The term was coined by Christian Tietze. It means that each note should contain one idea and one idea only. This makes it possible to link ideas with a laser focus.
The principle of autonomy: Each note should be autonomous, meaning it should be self-contained and comprehensible on its own. This allows notes to be moved, processed, separated, and concatenated independently of its neighbors. It also ensures that notes remain useful even if the original source of information disappears.

Directory Tree
- Directory names must be globally unique across the entire zettelkasten, inasmuch they directly reflect Zettel ID which must also be unique. This means that two directories or zettels with the same name but in different paths will not work: having both ./Home/Projects/HouseWarming and ./Work/Projects/FireZeMissiles will cause Neuron to attempt to generate two zettels with the ID Projects, which will cause an error. In order to resolve this error, and to keep the zettel IDs Atomic and autonomous#, it would be better to rename both notes to ./Home/HomeProjects/ and ./Work/WorkProjects/.
- This is one reason why it’s good practice to give your directories an Atomic and autonomous# Zettel ID–once you’ve generated your zettelkasten, you no longer have the parent directories around to provide context, because the context is provided by the zettel’s location in the Folgezettel Heterarchy (as can be visually seen in Uplink Tree). The example from before, ./Home/Projects, would create a note for your home projects with the ID Projects–we can no longer tell that it is specifically home projects. (The other reason it is good to have unique IDs is to avoid ID clash, as covered above.)

Zettelkasten#
- All notes in a Zettelkasten are linear, Atomic and autonomous#, with links created between them, enabling a Heterarchy# to evolve organically, rather than having to preconceive a hierarchy ahead (as is the case with outliners like Workflowy and Dynalist).
- Parent directory zettel