Commentarii Roamani

In today's issue we spot the light on a Roam Depot extension. Algorithms of Thought (AOT) puts a toolkit of thinking patterns right inside your graph. You'll break down problems, make trade-offs explicit, and leave behind a reasoning trail that’s robust to hindsight bias and future you’s selective memory.

Roam Depot Gems: Algorithms of Thought

The AOT extension bundles several distinct approaches. Here are a few:

• Agreement, Disagreement and Irrelevance

Break a statement or proposal into three parts: what you agree with, what you reject, and what’s irrelevant. This lens separates value from distraction, and often reveals that the crux of a disagreement is narrower than it first appears.

• Difference Engine

Start by describing where you are now and where you want to be. Compare the two and list the differences. Pick the most important one, then apply a technique designed to close that gap. If it works, move on to the next biggest difference; if it makes things worse, backtrack and try a different approach.

• Want, Impediment, Remedy:

Define what you want, identify the obstacle, and decide on the most direct way to remove it. The simplicity is deliberate, since complexity often conceals the real barrier.

• Next Action

Cut through planning inertia by asking one question: What is the very next step you can take to move this forward? The answer should be small enough to start immediately and concrete enough that you’ll know when it’s done. It’s a simple way to turn abstract goals into motion.

• TOSCA:

Trouble, Owner, Success Criteria, Constraints, Actors. Begin by defining the problem to be solved (Trouble) and identifying who is responsible for addressing it (Owner). Specify what success looks like (Success Criteria), note the limits you must work within (Constraints), and list the people or groups involved (Actors). Moving through the sequence reveals both the shape of the problem and the boundaries for solving it before you commit to a course of action.

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This extension gives you structured prompts you can run from the Command Palette or hotkeys + leaves a clean outline of your reasoning in the graph, strengthening Roam's role as a thinking tool.

Acknowledgements 💎

Thanks to the Roam community and thinkers who’ve kept these ideas alive and evolving.

• ​AOT extension — Mark Lavercombe​
• ​Roam42 SmartBlocks — Early community work
• ​Cortex Futura — Algorithms of Thought background
• ​VirtualSalt — Problem-solving techniques
• ​Zsolt’s blog — TOSCA framing
• ​Edward de Bono — PMI and related thinking patterns

🌱 Quality of Life Improvements

• Add filter on Daily Notes page.
• Option to include/exclude all Daily Notes.
• Move Query builder above results for live updates.
• Clause to filter all Daily Notes at once.
• Search now includes page titles.

You can read more about these updates in this thread.

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