Front Matter

Front matter is metadata placed at the top of a document, enclosed between triple-dashed lines. The editor supports a bounded front-matter format, which lets you attach structured data such as titles, tags, dates, and supported property values to your documents. It is not a general YAML editor.

Syntax

Front matter must be the very first thing in the document. It starts and ends with three dashes (---) on their own lines. Inside, use the supported simple key-value and list forms; unsupported or malformed YAML should remain readable source rather than being silently rewritten.

---
title: My Document
tags:
  - tutorial
  - reference
created: 2025-01-15
author: Jane Doe
---

# Document content starts here

Common use cases

• Document title - set a display title separate from the first heading
• Tags and categories - organize documents with searchable metadata
• Dates - track creation, modification, or publish dates
• Supported properties - use the bounded text, list, number, checkbox, date, date-time, tag, and quoted-link forms

Editor support

The editor includes a dedicated front matter widget for the bounded property forms. You can edit supported values directly in the editor, and changes are saved along with the rest of the document. The widget does not promise arbitrary YAML parsing, nested-property semantics, or every custom field type.

Related pages

For the Markdown syntax used in the document body below front matter, see Markdown Basics. For an overview of the editor itself, see Using the Editor.