A patch-native node is a knowledge node created specifically within a garden patch, not copied from the source garden. It is marked with ⊙ to distinguish it from grafted nodes (copied from upstream) and ghost links (not yet created).
Patch-native nodes arise when the patch author encounters concepts in the target content that deserve garden form treatment but have no existing counterpart in the source garden. In an Inter-Face Protocol garden patch, for example, glosses like “Gossip as Social Sensing Filter” and models like “Conversation Temperature as Protocol Cadence Spectrum” were seeded from the protocol specifications — concepts that needed interpretive framing through the garden lens.
The ⊙ marker signals provenance: this patch is the node’s garden home. A reader seeing ⊙ knows the node was not inherited from a larger knowledge base but was authored here, in this specific context. This distinction matters for trust and attribution — patch-native nodes reflect the patch author’s interpretation of the target content, while grafted nodes carry the authority of the source garden.
Patch-native nodes may later be adopted upstream into the source garden if they prove valuable beyond the patch context. This reverses the usual flow: instead of content moving downstream from source to patch, patch-native insights flow upstream, enriching the source garden with concepts discovered through application.