IWE demo graphs

[gimalay]

Two Knowledge Graphs, Two Different Problems

Most knowledge management tools come with opinions about how you should organize your thoughts. Folders, tags, backlinks, daily notes—pick your poison. The tool shapes your thinking before you've even started.

IWE takes a different approach: it gives you a hierarchical graph structure and gets out of the way. No imposed methodology, no required workflows. Just interconnected markdown documents that you organize however makes sense for what you're actually trying to do.

I've been building two very different knowledge graphs to demonstrate this flexibility. They solve completely different problems, use different organizational principles, and yet both run on the same building blocks.

Graph 1: Personal Organization

iwe.pub/pkm-demo — 200+ interconnected documents

This is a personal productivity system that weaves together multiple methodologies: GTD for task management, Zettelkasten for atomic notes, plus timelines, journals, and reading notes.

The structure document explains how these pieces fit together:

• Timeline navigates by date—months contain weeks contain days
• Zettelkasten captures atomic ideas with systematic cross-linking
• GTD separates capture (inboxes) from processing (actions, projects, waiting)

Different content types use prefixed IDs (w- for writing, bk- for books, p- for people) so everything can reference everything else. The result is a densely connected graph where daily notes link to projects link to people link to quotes link back to Zettelkasten notes.

Graph 2: Research and Analysis

iwe.pub/seventeen-centuries — 1,200+ interconnected documents

This graph maps philosophical concepts across three texts spanning seventeen centuries:

• Meditations by Marcus Aurelius (c. 170 CE)
• The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli (1532)
• Beyond Good and Evil by Friedrich Nietzsche (1886)

The structure is completely different from the productivity graph. Here, documents organize around themes—epistemology, ethics, power dynamics, virtue—rather than temporal or actionability hierarchies.

What makes this interesting is how it reveals connections across centuries of thought. Take the virtue page as an example. Marcus Aurelius sees virtue as natural alignment with reason. Machiavelli inverts this—unwavering moral conduct makes rulers vulnerable. Nietzsche warns that virtue itself can become a prison.

These aren't resolved into a tidy synthesis. The graph documents genuine philosophical tension, linking to specific passages where each thinker develops their position. It's a research tool, not an answer machine.

Same Tool, Different Structures

The productivity graph is hierarchical by time and action state. The philosophy graph is hierarchical by theme and concept. Both are valid ways to organize knowledge—just for different purposes.

That's the point. A graph structure doesn't dictate how you think. It just gives you a canvas to make connections visible.

---

Both graphs are primarily AI-generated (excluding source material) and created for demonstration purposes.