# PKM Vocabulary A controlled vocabulary for the concepts, terms, definitions, and relationships in an Obsidian vault — written down once so that my apps, scripts, agents, and AI tools all mean the same thing by "Day Cluster" or "Effort." **223 concepts · 18 collections · version 0.1.4 · CC BY 4.0** > [!abstract] Two homes, one source > The **canonical** vocabulary is SKOS/RDF, published at [w3id.org/pkm/vocab](https://w3id.org/pkm/vocab). That is what machines resolve, and it is where definitions are edited. > > The notes under this Obsidian hub are a **mirror for the link graph** — one stub per term, so the vocabulary participates in backlinks, graph view, and unlinked mentions the way every other note here does. A static site cannot do that. Nothing in the stubs is authoritative; if a definition looks wrong, I will fix it in the SKOS source and regenerate. ## Browse You can view the vocabulary terms in a nested hierarchy (broader/narrower), by collection, or alphabetically grouped by first letter. A full RDF Turtle file is available to download the entire PKM vocabulary with all 223 concepts and 18 collections; access the RDF Turtle file (`.ttl`) for a specific term URI such as a `Recipe` using `https://w3id.org/pkm/vocab/terms/Recipe.ttl`. | Resource | URI | | -------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------- | | Canonical term index | [w3id.org/pkm/vocab](https://w3id.org/pkm/vocab) | | Full RDF Turtle | [pkm-vocab.ttl](https://w3id.org/pkm/vocab/pkm-vocab.ttl) | | A single term | `https://w3id.org/pkm/vocab/{Term}` | | A single term as RDF | `https://w3id.org/pkm/vocab/terms/{Term}.ttl` | Term URIs are slash-based, so each one dereferences on its own: an RDF client asking for `https://w3id.org/pkm/vocab/Recipe` gets Turtle back, a browser gets that term's own page. ## Top concepts A *top concept* is the most general concept at the highest level of a hierarchical structure within a concept scheme. It's the root or starting point as the entry point for broader/narrower hierarchies. They are connected to a concept scheme using the property `skos:hasTopConcept` (or linked back via `skos:topConceptOf`). - [[Claude AI (Term)|Claude AI]] - [[Graph Database (Term)|Graph Database]] - [[Health Data (Term)|Health Data]] - [[Knowledge System Architecture (Term)|Knowledge System Architecture]] - [[Obsidian Notes (Term)|Obsidian Notes]] - [[PKM Python (Term)|PKM Python]] - [[PKM Swift (Term)|PKM Swift]] - [[Tool (Term)|Tool]] ## Collections A *collection* is a labeled group of related concepts that allows you to cluster terms without asserting a hierarchical relationship between them — membership carries no broader/narrower meaning. They are defined using `skos:Collection` and are most commonly used to represent "node labels" or facets in a thesaurus. These are the collections in alphabetical order with a count of concepts for each one. - [[Concept Collection (Collection)|Concept Collection]] (10) - [[Day Collection (Collection)|Day Collection]] (26) - [[Decade Collection (Collection)|Decade Collection]] (1) - [[Effort Collection (Collection)|Effort Collection]] (5) - [[Ideaverse Collection (Collection)|Ideaverse Collection]] (2) - [[Knowledge Collection (Collection)|Knowledge Collection]] (4) - [[Life Collection (Collection)|Life Collection]] (1) - [[Meal Domain (Collection)|Meal Domain]] (16) - [[Month Collection (Collection)|Month Collection]] (5) - [[Note Types (Collection)|Note Types]] (20) - [[Quarter Collection (Collection)|Quarter Collection]] (6) - [[Recipe Collection (Collection)|Recipe Collection]] (7) - [[Semantic Web Standards (Collection)|Semantic Web Standards]] (11) - [[Spark Collection (Collection)|Spark Collection]] (2) - [[Tech Stack (Collection)|Tech Stack]] (10) - [[Time Collection (Collection)|Time Collection]] (2) - [[Week Collection (Collection)|Week Collection]] (11) - [[Year Collection (Collection)|Year Collection]] (7) ## How the stubs work Every term note lives in `pkm/vocab/` and is named `{Preferred Label} (Term)` — or `(Collection)` for a collection. The qualifier is not decoration: 20 preferred labels collide with notes that already exist in this vault (`App`, `Map`, `Project`, `Taxonomy`, `Health`, `Swift`, and others), and an ambiguous `[[App]]` is exactly the drift this vocabulary exists to prevent. The suffix follows the convention already used by `Creativity Flywheel (Source)` and `PKM - Links (Prompts)`. Each stub carries: - `up` — the term's `skos:broader` parent(s), so the hierarchy is navigable natively in Obsidian - `related` — `skos:related` siblings - `aliases` — any `skos:altLabel`, so `[[Knowledge Graph]]` finds the term by either name - `uri` — the canonical w3id.org/pkm address - the definition and scope note, plus narrower terms and collection membership ISO 25964 (thesaurus and structured vocabularies) qualified parents (`broaderGeneric`, `broaderPartitive`) are annotated inline on the broader list rather than listed separately, since both are sub-properties of `skos:broader` — a partitive parent *is* a broader parent. Stubs are generated. Hand edits will be overwritten on the next run, which is why the companion notes ([[PKM Vocabulary - README|README]], [[PKM Vocabulary - Open Questions|Open Questions]], [[PKM Vocabulary - Changelog|Changelog]]) live one level up in `pkm/` instead. ## Elsewhere - [PKM Vocabulary — Published](https://blog.warrenweb.net/three-places-for-one-pkm-vocabulary) — Ghost blog post and newsletter - [[PKM Vocabulary - Open Questions]] — what I'm still unsure about, and where feedback helps most - Built with [Intentional Arrangement SKOS Editor](https://github.com/jesstalisman-ia/intentional-arrangement-skos) by Jessica Talisman --- #vocab/hub · created 2026-08-31 · modified 2026-09-02