Frontmatter and note properties
Frontmatter is a small block of YAML at the very top of a note, fenced by three dashes. It holds the note’s metadata: its title, its tags, and anything else you or another editor wants to record.
---
title: Ridge traverse
tags:
- hiking
- gear
---
The note itself starts here.It has to be the first thing in the file, with no blank line above it. Frontmatter is metadata rather than content, so it never appears in the rendered note.
What Notate reads
| Key | What it is |
|---|---|
title | The note’s title, which wins over the filename |
tags | The note’s tags, as a list |
description | A short summary of the note |
date | When the note was created |
updated | When it was last changed |
aliases | Other names for the note |
Every other key is read as an unknown field and left alone.
What Notate writes
Notate only ever writes three of them: title, tags, and description. Renaming a note updates title, tagging it updates tags, and generating an AI summary updates description.
Everything else in the block is preserved exactly as you left it, down to the byte. Notate edits only the line region belonging to a key it manages, so your comments, blank lines, key order, and any keys it has never heard of survive untouched. A note that has been through another editor keeps whatever that editor put there.
Where to edit it
Frontmatter is hidden while you write, so you see your note instead of its metadata.
- On desktop, the properties panel above the editor shows each field and lets you edit it directly.
- On desktop and web, the
</>button in the row above the text shows the raw block when you want to edit the YAML by hand. - On mobile, frontmatter is kept up to date for you as you rename, tag, and summarize a note.
Tags in frontmatter and in the body
Tags written in frontmatter are the form Notate authors. It also reads inline tags from the body of a note, like #hiking, so a folder of notes written elsewhere arrives with its tags already in place. Both kinds show up in the Tags tab and in search. See tags and favorites for how to browse and rename them, and the markdown guide for the syntax with rendered examples.
A note on aliases
Notate reads aliases and shows them in the properties panel, but they are not wired into linking: a wiki-link resolves against note titles, not aliases. The field is there so metadata from another editor survives a round trip, not as a second way to address a note.