The Zones

Each folder cognitiveOS generates is one cognitive mode. You never decide where to look. Your agent reads STATE.md, then routes to the right zone for what you're doing. The zones map to how an ADHD brain actually moves: capture without friction, triage later, then protect one task at a time.

Zone	What it holds
`brain-dump/`	Capture everything, no filter.
`queue/`	What's next, already sorted.
`focus/`	The ONE thing right now, one task, enforced.
`projects/`	Active work.
`ideas/`	Captured, not committed.
`someday/`	Not now, not never.
`sessions/`	Auto-logged history.

brain-dump

A capture buffer. Accept everything, judge nothing. When a stray thought shows up mid-task, cognitiveos dump "..." appends it here (brain-dump/inbox.md) and you keep working. No filter, no "is this relevant", no follow-up questions. Getting it out of your head is the whole job. Triage happens later, in queue/.

queue

The triager. It turns raw captures into a sorted, ready backlog, reading brain-dump/inbox.md against your current focus. It sorts by urgency, energy, and dopamine, surfaces the smallest next action first, and shows at most 3 items so the list never becomes its own overwhelm.

focus

The execution guard, the most opinionated zone. focus/current-task.md holds exactly one task. Try to add a second and the agent refuses, and cognitiveos check fails if two ever land there. Responses stay narrow: a few action items, one question at a time. Stuck longer than 30 minutes, it notes the blocker and offers the smallest next step instead of letting you spin.

projects

The steward for active work. One subfolder per project under projects/[name]/, each with its own context, no loose files at this level. This is the ADHD cap on parallel work: keep active projects few, and when a new one competes for attention the agent surfaces the conflict rather than quietly letting you run six at once.

ideas

An idea keeper. Hold possibilities with zero pressure to act. One line per idea, an optional one-line why. Nothing here is auto-promoted to a task. You decide what graduates to queue/ or projects/, so capturing an idea never silently commits you to doing it.

someday

The holding zone: not now, not never. Nothing here is urgent and there's zero guilt about inaction. Entries stay short, a pointer rather than a plan, and you review it monthly, not daily. It exists so "maybe later" has a home that isn't your working memory.

sessions

Auto-logged history. At session end the hook rolls closed loops and older wins out of STATE.md into sessions/, which is how STATE.md stays a flat snapshot instead of growing into a log. You rarely open this by hand, it's the archive your current state sheds.

Next steps

STATE.md: the snapshot the agent reads before routing here.
Hooks: the automation that rolls history into sessions/.