A useful blend brief can hold an invariant quality floor constant while allowing one or more style variables to change.
Some exploratory sessions begin without a defined style target. Even then, basic fault and balance criteria can remain invariant; once a promising direction appears, its variable target should be written before optimization.
Four Roses requires every limited edition to remain sound, smooth, mellow, and balanced while seeking a different profile each year. For consumer work, the target sheet should separate acceptance criteria from creative variables. A prototype that is novel but violates the quality floor is rejected; a technically sound prototype that does not advance the variable target remains a control or dead end.
Derived from two first-person Elliott sources and bounded to blending workflow.
A Zettel is one durable idea in your own words—not a quotation, source summary, or draft-book claim.
Atomic idea
State one complete idea. It should be understandable on its own and specific enough to connect to other notes.
Reasoning
Explain why the idea is true or useful in Rationale and Implications. Record meaningful objections or exceptions in Counterpoints.
Provenance
Connect one or more Literature Notes. Direct source relations are legacy-only; trace evidence through the literature-note and excerpt chain.
Connections
Apply approved Tags for retrieval and one or more Themes only when the note genuinely advances those interpretive threads.