1. Foci — the things you reason about
A focus is the basic unit of a ThoughtML document: a thing you’re reasoning about. An observation, a claim, an option, a goal — anything you might later support, attack, question, or believe.
You declare one with the focus keyword and an id, then add prose on the next
indented line:
focus conditions-are-fine
Conditions on site are fine to pour the slab this afternoon.
The id (conditions-are-fine) is how everything else in the document refers to this
focus. The indented sentence is its body — free text, for humans.
Kinds
A focus has a kind — its semantic category. You set it with a kind field:
focus conditions-are-fine
kind claim
Conditions on site are fine to pour the slab this afternoon.
focus truck-is-booked
kind observation
The ready-mix truck is booked for 14:00 and the crew is on site.
There are ten kinds:
| Kind | What it is |
|---|---|
observation | Something seen or measured |
claim | An assertion put forward as true |
hypothesis | A proposed explanation, not yet settled |
option | A choice on the table |
decision | A choice to be made (or made) |
outcome | A result an option can lead to |
goal | Something you want |
assumption | Something taken as given |
memory | A recollection carried forward |
action | Something you do — a plan, intervention, mitigation |
Kinds are optional but recommended: they make the graph readable at a glance (the playground gives each kind its own node shape) and they let the language catch category mistakes.
You don’t always write focus
Most of the time you won’t declare foci with the bare focus keyword. The
readable posture syntax creates them for you, inferring the kind:
analyst noticed truck-is-booked
The ready-mix truck is booked for 14:00 and the crew is on site.
noticed creates the focus truck-is-booked and gives it the kind
observation automatically. You’ll meet the full set of postures in
chapter 3. For now, the rule of thumb: declare a focus explicitly
with focus when you want to set its kind precisely or when several agents will
refer to it; let a posture create it when it belongs to one agent’s action.
Our document so far
focus conditions-are-fine
kind claim
Conditions on site are fine to pour the slab this afternoon.
focus truck-is-booked
kind observation
The ready-mix truck is booked for 14:00 and the crew is on site.
focus overnight-freeze
kind observation
The thermometer logged minus four degrees overnight.
Three foci, no connections yet. Right now ThoughtML will warn that they’re orphans — nothing relates them. We fix that next, with links.