What’s inside

One SKILL.md (the playbook) + one starter template. A preview:

Hand-Drawn Visual Notes

When to use

• You just read a dense chapter or paper and want to remember its argument, not just highlight it
• A lecture moved too fast to take structured notes and you need to rebuild it from memory and slides
• You are revising for an exam and plain rewritten notes are not sticking
• You need to explain a complicated topic to someone else on a single sheet
• Your notes are pages of undifferentiated text and you cannot find anything in them later

Workflow

1. Extract the spine (input: source material → output: 5–9 key ideas)
   Read or paste the source — chapter, lecture transcript, article, or meeting notes — and pull out the load-bearing ideas: the claim, the evidence, the mechanism, the exceptions. Aim for 5–9 ideas; fewer and the sheet is a poster, more and it is a wall of text again. Each idea gets one short sentence in your own words. If you cannot state an idea in one sentence, you do not understand it yet — that is the signal to re-read, not to copy a longer quote.
2. Choose a layout that fits the logic (input: key ideas → output: page layout)
   Pick the layout from the shape of the material, not from habit: a process or timeline goes left-to-right; a cause-and-effect chain goes top-to-bottom; a comparison goes in two columns; a central concept with branches goes in a radial map. Sketch the layout as boxes and arrows before any drawing. One page, one layout — mixing two layouts on one sheet is the fastest way to make it unreadable.
3. Draw the sheet (input: layout + key ideas → output: finished visual notes page)
   Build the page by hand or with a stylus, one idea per visual block: a quick sketch (a box, a stick figure, a diagram — ugly is fine, recognizable is what matters), a 1–3 word label in large letters, and one short sentence underneath. Connect blocks with arrows that say something — label the arrow ("causes", "needs", "contradicts") instead of leaving a bare line. Use at most three colors: one for structure, one for emphasis, one for warnings or exceptions.
4. Add memory hooks (input: finished page → output: page with hooks)
   For each idea that feels slippery, add one hook: a tiny example, a contrast ("not X, but Y"), a number, or a one-line "why it matters". Hooks are what turn a pretty page into a sheet you can recall from. Limit yourself to one hook per block — the page must stay scannable in under a minute.

Template preview

Hand-Drawn Visual Notes — Study Sheet Template

One topic = one page. Paraphrase everything in your own words.

Title line

Topic: {topic} | Source: {book ch. / lecture / article / meeting} | Date: {date}

Step 1 — The spine (5–9 key ideas, one sentence each, your own words)

1. {idea}
2. {idea}
3. {idea}
4. {idea}
5. {idea}
6. {idea}
7. {idea}

Step 2 — Layout (pick ONE, matching the logic of the material)

[ ] Timeline / process (left → right) [ ] Cause → effect chain (top → bottom) [ ] Comparison (two columns) [ ] Radial map (central concept + branches) [ ] Other: {layout}

Rough layout sketch: {boxes + arrows, before any finished drawing}

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