Try a note in ten minutes

Open the playground. Work there without installing anything, or save your source in a file such as inquiry.cog.md.

Start with ordinary writing

- The new deployment has produced intermittent timeouts.
  - We have logs from two servers, but no comparison from last week.

Nothing is marked, so no graph entities are created. Your context is still there to read.

Mark the part you want to examine

- The new deployment has produced intermittent timeouts.
  - [Q] What explains the failures?
    - [C?] The connection pool may be exhausted.
      - [G] Logs show connection acquisition failures.
      - [O] An upstream service may be slow.
  - Check the traces before making changes.

Q marks a question, C? a tentative claim, G a reason, and O an objection. Indentation connects marked lines. Move one and inspect which connection changes. Unmarked context stays body.

Name something when you need to refer to it

Add @cause to the claim, then connect an objection elsewhere using ->:

- [C? @cause] The connection pool may be exhausted.
  - [G] Logs show connection acquisition failures.
- A separate check of the timeline:
  - [O -> @cause] Some timeouts started before this deployment.

A name is optional until a reference needs it. The anonymous reason and objection are still points in the map.

You now have a note with context, a tentative explanation, a reason, and an objection connected from elsewhere. That is enough for a first note. When you need to question a connection itself or combine several reasons, look up Bearings.

Optional: use files and the CLI

With Node.js 22.12 or newer, run the Alpha CLI on your saved note:

npx --package @cogitatum/cli@alpha cog check inquiry.cog.md
npx --package @cogitatum/cli@alpha cog graph inquiry.cog.md

The packages are @cogitatum/core and @cogitatum/cli at 0.3.0-alpha.1. Use the alpha tag, or pin this exact version for a reproducible integration. To work on the compiler itself, see the public source.

Replace the path with your file. check reports syntax and reference problems; graph prints the marked connections as JSON. For a visual result, use the playground.

In an existing Markdown document, place the outline in a document-level cog fence and use cog check --input host followed by the file path. Each fence is independent.

Keep editing the source. The compiler checks marks and references; assessing the reasoning remains part of the inquiry. Look up points, connections, or syntax as needed.