Frontmatter & Metadata

Frontmatter is a YAML block at the top of a page that carries structured metadata. It's optional, but it's the difference between "I have a folder of notes" and "I have a knowledge base I can filter, sort, and find things in."

Anatomy of frontmatter

A YAML block delimited by --- on lines by themselves:

yaml
---
title: Feedback Loops
area: patterns
type: note
created: 2026-05-09
updated: 2026-05-09
confidence: high
tags: [systems, dynamics, recurring]
---

After the closing ---, the rest of the page is regular markdown.

Frontmatter is plain YAML, so it's portable everywhere — the same syntax used by Hugo, Jekyll, Astro, Docusaurus, and most markdown ecosystems.

Canonical fields

These are the fields MindWiki surfaces first. Every page can use any subset of them.

FieldTypeWhat it's for
titletextDisplay name for the page. Used by wikilink resolution. If absent, the file name is used.
areatextTop-level grouping. Often matches the parent folder (e.g. capture, research, projects).
typetextWhat kind of page this is — note, pattern, project, decision, source, reference, etc. Free-form, but reusing values lets you filter and group.
createddateWhen the page was created (YYYY-MM-DD).
updateddateWhen the page was last meaningfully updated.
confidencetextHow sure you are: high, medium, low, speculative. Useful on research and decision pages.
tagslistKeywords for search and filtering. Use a list: [a, b, c].

You can use just title, just tags, all of the above, or none of them. Frontmatter is opt-in.

Custom fields

Add any field you want. MindWiki auto-detects the type so the UI can render it correctly. The macOS app surfaces all fields — canonical ones first, then custom fields alphabetically.

Examples of custom fields people use:

yaml
---
title: Q3 Planning Meeting
area: projects
type: meeting-notes
attendees: [Alice, Bob, Carol]
status: in-progress
priority: high
deadline: 2026-09-15
client: [[Acme Corp]]
budget: 25000
shipped: false
source: https://docs.example.com/spec
---

Each custom field gets the right input control automatically — see Properties for the type detection rules.

Pinning

Setting pinned: true on a page adds it to your favorites list, surfaced in the sidebar of both clients. This is the same as clicking the pin icon in the Properties panel.

yaml
---
title: Daily Hub
pinned: true
---

Why frontmatter is worth using

Three concrete payoffs:

  • Filter and sort. With type and area set, you can instantly view every decision you've ever made, or every page in area: research. The web app's Table view sorts and filters across the whole vault.
  • Better search. Frontmatter values are indexed. Searching for confidence: high or status: in-progress works.
  • AI-readable structure. When your AI client searches the vault, frontmatter gives it shape. A query like "what are my high-confidence patterns?" works because the AI can read the type and confidence fields.

Parsing rules

A few details that matter when writing frontmatter:

  • Booleans. true and false are recognized as checkboxes.
  • Numbers. Plain digits like 25000 are parsed as numbers.
  • Dates. ISO format YYYY-MM-DD is recognized as a date.
  • Lists. Use [a, b, c] square-bracket syntax. Block-style YAML lists also work.
  • URLs. Start with http:// or https:// to be detected as a URL property.
  • Wikilinks in frontmatter. Wrap with [[...]] to be detected as link properties.
  • Quoting. Quote strings only when they contain special characters (colons, brackets) or look like another type.

Editing frontmatter

  • macOS app — the Properties panel at the top of every page is the recommended way. It exposes typed inputs (date pickers, checkboxes, list editors, dropdowns) instead of raw YAML.
  • Web app — edit the YAML block directly in the editor. Live styling will keep it readable.

Where to go next