Anatomy of a Seed

A Seed is the unit of work. Smaller than a project, larger than a thought. Most things in ARA orbit them.

The fields, ranked by what matters

1. Title (required) — keep it short, action-shaped. "Order soil amendments for north bed" beats "Soil stuff".
2. Garden & Section — where this lives. A Seed without a Garden is a personal Seed; only you see it.
3. Caretaker — who's doing it. Multiple caretakers are allowed; the Seed shows on each of their My Patch.
4. Due date — optional. Not every Seed needs one. Add it when missing the date has a real consequence.
5. Priority — high, medium, or low. Default is medium. If everything's high, nothing is.
6. Description — optional. Use it for context the title can't fit ("the supplier said call before Friday").

The two interactions worth knowing

Watering. The water-drop icon is a lightweight "+1" — it says "I see this, I think it's important, keep going." Caretakers see who watered. No notification, no obligation. Useful for cheering on the work without piling on more comments.

Comments. Threaded under the Seed. Tagging someone with @name notifies them.

Subtasks

Inside any Seed you can plant smaller Seeds. Use this sparingly — usually for a Seed that's actually a small project ("Set up irrigation" → "Buy hose / Connect to tank / Test pressure"). Don't sub-task a 10-minute task. The overhead isn't worth it.

Completing one

Click the circle on the left. The Seed animates and moves to Done. Caretakers get a notification. The Garden's Vitality nudges up. If the Seed was on your Daily Rhythm, it disappears from the Dashboard.

Completed by mistake? Click the circle again within a few seconds to undo. After that, you can re-open the Seed from the Garden's Done section.

Deleting

Three-dot menu > Delete. Caretakers and Architects of the Garden can do this. Watering history and comments go with it. There's a confirmation step so accidents are rare.

Best practice: name the next physical action

The single biggest predictor of whether a Seed gets done is whether the title names a thing you can actually do. "Talk to Maya" is fine. "Decide the food budget" is not — what's the next move? Email? Schedule a meeting? Look up last quarter's spend? Make that the Seed.