Inquiry

NKS Inquiry

A vimarsha is not a sticky note. It is a recorded tension with reality that must eventually be discharged — resolved, released, or crystallized into form. writing poses the question; this skill carries it through its life and works the field as a whole.

The symptom this skill fixes: realms accumulate dangling vimarshas — unanchored, unresolved, invisible to the agents who could discharge them. A field of free questions that never converges to understanding is a realm that thinks but never learns.

1. Anchoring is mandatory

An unanchored vimarsha is an invisible vimarsha — it surfaces in no lens="vimarshas", propagates to no node. Every vimarsha needs two arrows:

• vimarsha_of → the node(s) the question is about. Without it the question floats.
• arose_from → the observation it was seen from (a node, an incident, a prior vimarsha). Without it the question has no origin to trace back to.

A vimarsha carrying an expectation (a posed_to arrow to a karta, anga to a bianhua) needs the anchor doubly: agents discover work by orienting on a holon, and neither anga nor posed_to scopes a vimarsha into anyone's contour — without vimarsha_of into the addressee's territory it is invisible there and will never be done. Minimum anchor — the holon where the expected work lives; better — the precise phenomenon or kriya within it. (The unanchored detector fires post-hoc; don't rely on it — anchor at posing time.) posed_to is the live inbox edge to a karta — so an addressee can poll "my open questions"; forbidden to a pratibimba (an image can't answer), and it never substitutes for vimarsha_of.

The mirror failure is just as real: vimarsha_of without posed_to on a question that expects another doer to act — anchored, visible in the territory, in no one's inbox; a delegation degraded to a note-into-the-void. If you expect someone to act, name them: the 能 who stewards the holon where the work lives (writing Decision 2b — find it via the steward arrow or nks_search(q="", node_type="karta"), never from orient's root-kartas showcase), never a pratibimba.

Anchor where the ADDRESSEE orients, not where you stand. A tool defect noticed while editing skills belongs in the tool's holon; a methodology gap found while shipping code, in the methodology's node. Anchored in your own territory instead, it passes the unanchored check and stays invisible to the one who could answer — a failure that hides from the detector rather than being caught by it.

If you find a dangling vimarsha (orient flags them), the first move is almost always to anchor it, then triage.

2. The lifecycle — three outcomes

A vimarsha is live while it holds an open tension. It leaves the live field by exactly one of three doors:

Plus two non-terminal moves:

• Supersede — a later question subsumes this one: supersedes arrow on the replacement, old → visarjana.
• Park — needed, not now: volitive upeksha, set consciously. Park is a mode, never attrs.parked=true (suppression is an anti-pattern).

All of these are modes and arrows, never attrs. nks_update(... volitive_mode=...) moves the mode; nks_arrow(action="link", ...) creates addressed_by / supersedes / arose_from. The live arrow matrix permits addressed_by only to a kriya, karta, or vimarsha — never to a phenomenon. A standing-form answer is crystallization: phenomenon arose_from vimarsha, then close the vimarsha without inventing an addressed_by edge. Re-check nks_arrow(realm="?") before teaching or automating another target shape. Every update/delete/reconnect mutation needs the edge or node basis_version from a fresh nks_look; a new link does not.

When closure changes more than one member of the terminal triputi, send the final epistemic, ontic, and volitive modes together in one nks_update with one fresh basis_version. Do not walk a node through ceremonial intermediate updates such as vartamana and then atita. Create any required answer edge/form first, then perform at most that one terminal node update.

3. Genre sets the character of resolution

The genre you posed under (writing) determines what counts as discharging it:

If you can't say what would discharge a vimarsha, its genre may be wrong — re-check it (that's a writing decision).

4. Inquiry and transformation (bianhua)

A vimarsha is either part of a transformation or free inquiry — decide which, consciously:

• anga of a bianhua — its resolution drives a qualitative transformation the system is undergoing. Attach it: nks_arrow(action="link", arrow_type="anga", source=<vimarsha>, target=<bianhua>). The vimarsha keeps its vimarsha_of (its real subject); anga is additional — it says "my resolution moves this transformation toward completion." Genre sets the character of involvement: samshaya removes a blocking uncertainty, risk protects the bianhua, vyabhichara fixes a defect in it, prati-paksha's evaluation moves it. Attach to the existing forest (lens="bianhua"); a single vimarsha never justifies a new bianhua — when no transformation fits and you're unsure, ask the user instead of creating one (a bianhua's name and telos are the owner's acceptance surface — assembly skill).
• free inquiry — a genuine open question not part of any transformation underway. Leave it free — but consciously, not by neglect.

A bianhua's anga are not only questions: nks_search(anga_of=<bianhua>) and the lens="bianhua" focus surface kriya-carriers beside the vimarsha-drivers. A vimarsha-anga is the path (its resolution moves the change); a kriya-anga is the arrival — the deed that constitutes it. Read its direction from the kriya's own triputi (no anga_kind): a возведение enters the fabric (anagata→vartamana, chanda/adhimoksha), a депрекация leaves it (vartamana→atita, virodha). So a transformation can be carried forward by a deed done, not only a question answered — a finished kriya stays anga'd as the arrival (отдача долга), and its resolved (from its triputi) counts toward the bianhua's progress.

Building the map from the field — clustering vimarshas into bianhua, ordering transformations — is the assembly skill. This skill decides each vimarsha's fate; assembly does the realm-wide pass.

5. Escalation — what is yours, what is not

Decisions with transcendent will — refusal, priority, choosing-otherwise — are not the agent's. Surface them; don't resolve them to clear the field. (This is the same boundary the assembly skill draws between Сборщик and Мыслепрактик.)

6. The session must arrive at understanding

The principle that governs the whole skill: a session should converge to bildung-understandings, not only spawn more vimarshas. Triaging a field that ends with more open questions than it started — and no crystallized insight — has not landed. Before you close a field-work session, ask: what did we now understand that we didn't? Record it (crystallize — see outcome 3). A field that only grows is a realm that never learns.

7. Session-close sweep — the mirror of orient-first

Entry → orient opens a session; nothing closes one, so questions raised mid-work stay where they were dropped — in the transcript. Before finishing, run nks_orient(lens="vimarshas", since=<session start>) and give every vimarsha you yourself raised one outcome from sections 2–5: anchored, attached, resolved, closed, or parked with a stated reason.

Two failures, pulling opposite ways. Ceremony — closing to empty a counter, which is section 2's suppression wearing a tidy face; a parked question with a reason beats a closed one without. Amnesia — a session that resolved much and asked nothing, though the work surfaced real doubt. The sweep is where both show.

Acceptance

• The dangling field of a real realm can be triaged end-to-end by this skill alone, without reaching for the methodology text.
• Every triage outcome is expressible as exactly one move from sections 2–5: anchor, resolve, kill, crystallize, supersede, park, anga, or escalate.

What inquiry is NOT

• Not posing a vimarsha — genre, name-as-question, arose_from at birth → writing.
• Not the realm-wide map — clustering vimarshas into bianhua, ordering, producing 形 → assembly.
• Not suppression — visarjana/upeksha are conscious closures with reasoning, never a way to silence a tension you don't want to see.