The irreducible epistemic atoms underlying the curriculum. 4,828 atoms across 8 types and 2 molecules
Human working memory holds approximately 3 to 5 items simultaneously; this limit is architectural and cannot be expanded through training.
Unresolved cognitive commitments — uncaptured thoughts, unfinished tasks, unexternalized plans — consume working memory as persistent background processes until completed or externalized to a trusted system.
During conversation, working memory bandwidth splits between comprehension and production planning, causing people to retain their own contributions more accurately than their partner's and exhibit systematically poor recall for information presented immediately before their turn to speak.
Write down competing thoughts as separate, explicitly labeled statements rather than attempting to reconcile them internally, because working memory cannot hold two positions while simultaneously evaluating them.
During real-time execution of high-stakes tasks, defer metacognitive recursion beyond two levels to avoid working memory saturation—externalize to enable deeper inspection.
Maintain a priority stack of three to five items maximum, working exclusively on the top item until it completes or genuinely blocks, then rotating to the next unblocked item rather than distributing attention across the full list.
Cut recurring low-stakes decision domains to 3-7 options maximum, because this range matches working memory capacity for effective comparison without overload.
Limit output checklists to five-to-nine items targeting errors that are both frequent and consequential, ordering from most catastrophic to least to enable partial execution under time pressure.