Six Ways to Drop a Thought

What this means for you

Every post on CAIRN picks one of six labels. The label tells the reader what kind of thinking they are about to read before they read it — observation, reflection, hypothesis, question, connection, or signal.

The pitch

Six labels, picked once per post. No nested categories, no tags, no channels. The label is the table of contents.

Who it’s for

Anyone writing the post composer copy, the onboarding tour, or the tooltip text.

Proof points

• 6 fixed types, no custom types — the vocabulary stays small enough to remember
• Each type has one icon and one color so the feed reads at a glance
• The “signal” type is reserved for trends a single post couldn’t show — e.g. “deployment failures up 3x in two weeks”

mindmap
  root((Six stone types))
    Observation
      something noticed
    Reflection
      second-guessing a past call
    Hypothesis
      untested idea
    Question
      open puzzle
    Connection
      two things that rhyme
    Signal
      a trend across many things