A human-first journaling method designed to preserve lived experience, meaning, and persona continuity across time, digitization, and AI processing.

Living Signal is a journaling method for capturing personal history in a way that is natural for humans to write and structurally legible for future retrieval systems (including AI). It focuses on "signaling" moments of high meaning—Reflection, Emotion, Decision, Identity—without turning journaling into a data-entry task.

• Journaling Method: The core guide. How to write, structure entries, and use signal blocks.
• Cheat Sheet: A quick reference for entry format and signal types.
• Whitepaper: The theoretical and academic background behind the methodology.

This repository focuses exclusively on the journaling method and the underlying data protocol for writing. It does not prescribe a specific AI implementation or prompting strategy.

By separating the method from the model, Living Signal serves as a neutral foundation for any future digitization system. The structured "signals" provided by this method can be used to power:

• RAG-based AI Personas: Retrieving signals to ground chatbot responses in authentic lived experience.
• Personal Analytics: Visualizing trends in emotion or decision-making over time.
• Digital Biographies: Structurally organizing memories for narrative generation.
• Mental Health Tools: Tracking patterns in reflection and identity.

The data remains your own, structured for whatever future intelligence you choose to apply to it.

.
├── docs/                 # Core documentation and guides
│   ├── journaling-method.md
│   ├── cheat-sheet.md
│   └── whitepaper.md
└── README.md

Start by reading the Journaling Method to understand the core principles. Use the Cheat Sheet as a daily reference until the syntax becomes second nature.

Living Signal™

Copyright © 2026 Aaron Sahlstrom.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

• You are free to: Share and Adapt the material.
• Under the following terms:
  • Attribution: You must credit Aaron Sahlstrom.
  • NonCommercial: You may not use this material for commercial purposes (e.g., selling books, courses, or apps based primarily on this content).
  • ShareAlike: If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license.
• Trademark: "Living Signal" is a trademark of Aaron Sahlstrom. You may not use this name for commercial products without permission.