Layer 5

Reference: Where to look

Where should someone look for authoritative source material?

Canonical path	`reference/`
Trigger	External docs, manuals, source links, schemas, papers, repositories, long documents.
Stores	Pointers, location notes, excerpts, ownership, and verification metadata.
Avoid	Summaries that should be semantic and instructions that should be procedural.
Lifecycle	Refresh location and verification metadata; preserve source provenance.

Where to look

Reference memory is a map to authoritative material. It should make a source findable, scoped, and trustable without copying the whole source into memory.

The 60-second test	If a future operator cannot find the useful place in the referenced material within 60 seconds, add section anchors, excerpts, or convert the distilled claim into semantic memory.
Long doc rule	Long documents do not become semantic just because they contain facts. Store the pointer here and extract stable facts separately.
Verification	Track owner, location, access notes, and last_verified so stale links can be found by the Janitor.

Folder tree showing the reference layer. — Reference is optimized for source lookup and verification metadata.

Good reference note

---
type: reference
source: Notion/Davai Memory Layers
last_verified: 2026-05-05
owner: Dave
---
Use the "Layer routing" section for canonical trigger definitions.
Extract only stable rules into semantic/.

Poor reference note

Everything from the Davai Notion page pasted here...

That creates a stale duplicate. Store the source pointer and extract only what retrieval needs.