Writing like Lightning

An opinionated system and masterclass for academic, scientific and creative nonfiction writing, inspired by Zettelkasten (the slip box), quietly powered by AI agents.

Keep your notes as a graph. Let each new piece strike a line through it. You choose where the line starts and what it has to touch; the argument that comes back is yours to fight with until it is yours to sign.

Three short films say it in under thirty seconds each: watch them.

Three ways in

You can write like you've always loved to. You did not become a researcher to answer email. The system takes the admin off the page and leaves the ideas on it.

We'll help you make connections. The best work in every field came from someone who joined two things nobody had joined. A slip box is a machine for that. An agent is a slip box that never tires of walking it.

Your imagination is your canvas. The page is slow because it is linear. Your thinking is not. Keep the thinking in a graph and let each piece strike a line through it.

The core, and two modules that follow

Opinionated means you would have to change some things. The core is four of them.

1. Notes, not documents. One idea per note, in plain text, in one folder. That folder is the slip box.
2. Links, not filing. Notes point at notes. Over months the folder becomes a graph. Nobody organises it; it accretes.
3. A history you can go back to. Every change is a snapshot. It is safe to let anyone, person or agent, edit.
4. The sequence, and the strike. A new piece is an ordered path through the notes. You choose where it starts and what it must touch; the agent walks the path, drafts along it and shows its working; you argue with the draft until it is yours. The path is kept, so it can be walked again.

The core stands on its own and is enough for an essay, a chapter or a paper. Two modules build on it for people whose material is more than their own notes.

References. For academics. Every source is one record with a stable key and one note that summarises it, kept beside the slip box rather than in it until it has earned a place. A citation becomes a pointer, not retyped text, and the agent cannot invent one.

Analyses. For quantitative researchers, statisticians and analysts. The ideas sit beside the code and the data that test them, and the piece is built, not saved: when the data change, the figures, the tables and the sentences that depend on them change with them. This is where the knowledge tree grows fruit.

The core takes weeks, not an afternoon, and it feels like a loss of speed before it feels like a gain. Most people who try it alone stop at the links. That is what the introduction, and the help behind it, are for.

Older than it looks

Niklas Luhmann wrote seventy books and hundreds of papers from a box of linked cards, and said the box was his co-author. An essay was once an assay: a weighing, an argument tested by opposition in front of a judge, which is what a Socratic session with a model is.

The system is a way of getting the argument back into the writing, at a pace one person could not sustain alone.

One warning. The lightning is fast because the graph is deep and maintained. A shallow graph produces mediocre volume quickly, and the system is not for that.

How it is delivered

First, the mailing list. Sign up and the introduction follows. Every sign-up also helps us judge demand and needs, which decides what runs, where, and for whom.

Then, questions. Email rabbie@ktandb.co.uk with questions, queries and requirements.

Then, a shape that fits. We are happy to tailor the offering to what you need: one-to-one guidance, teaching a team, or masterclasses and support delivered weekly.

Or, the system at work. We are also willing to coproduce a report, a paper or something like it with you, so you can see how the system works while it is doing the work.

For, and not for

For people who write to think, in any discipline, at any career stage, whose material is notes, sources, interviews, data and drafts, and who have felt the page move slower than the mind.

Not for anyone who wants the model to write the paper. The voice and the argument stay yours, and the record of who did what is part of the system. Not for anyone looking for a tool recommendation. The tools will change; the practice will not.

Who

Knowledge Tree and Butterfly Ltd, founded by Jon Minton. The proof that the practice works on real work is a fertility paper from 2020, taken apart and regrown in two to three days six years later, then split and merged and argued over in the open. The idea underneath it is the knowledge tree.