para-filelisted

# PARA File > "Organize by actionability, not by subject. The right question is not *what is this about?* > but *which project will this move forward?*" — adapted from Tiago Forte, fortelabs.com/blog/para ## Core Philosophy PARA sorts every piece of information into exactly four categories that exist identically on every platform: **Projects** (short-term efforts with a goal and an end), **Areas** (ongoing responsibilities with a standard to maintain, no end date), **Resources** (topics of ongoing interest / reference), and **Archives** (inactive items from the other three). The discipline that makes PARA work is sorting by *actionability*, not topic — a document about "marketing" is not filed under a "Marketing" folder; it is filed wherever it is most actionable right now. This skill files one item at a time. It is deliberately fast — the cost of a slightly-wrong filing is near zero because items move freely between categories as their status changes, and `para-review` catches drift later. Bias toward placing the item and moving on, not toward a perfect taxonomy. **Non-Negotiable Constraints:** 1. ACTIONABILITY ORDER — evaluate Projects → Areas → Resources → Archives, in that order, and file at the first match. The most actionable home wins. (Decision tree in `references/classification-heuristics.md`.) 2. FOUR CATEGORIES ONLY — never invent a fifth top-level bucket. Sub-structure lives *inside* P/A/R. 3. NEVER DESTROY — filing only creates or moves; it never deletes.