Tags and Frontmatter

Every note in Atlas can carry structured metadata alongside its content. There are two ways to add this metadata: YAML frontmatter at the top of the file, and inline tags anywhere in the body.

YAML frontmatter

Frontmatter is a block of metadata at the very top of a markdown file, wrapped in --- lines:

---
title: Sprint Planning
date: 2026-02-24
type: meeting
tags: [work, planning, sprint]
summary: Planning session for the February sprint.
---

# Sprint Planning

Meeting notes start here...

The frontmatter block must:

• Start on the very first line of the file
• Begin and end with --- (three hyphens)
• Use valid YAML syntax (key: value)

Everything between the --- markers is metadata, not visible note content.

Common frontmatter fields

Field	Type	Purpose
title	text	The human-readable title for the note
date	date (YYYY-MM-DD)	When the note was created or relevant
type	text	Note category (note, meeting, idea, journal, reference)
tags	list	Topics and categories for this note
summary	text	A one-line description Atlas can show as a preview
status	text	Custom status like draft, active, archived

You can add any fields you like. Atlas reads and exposes all frontmatter fields — these are just the most common ones.

Inline tags

Inline tags let you tag a note (or a specific line within a note) without frontmatter. Use the #tagname syntax anywhere in the note body:

Finished the first draft of the proposal today. #work #milestone

Had a call with the design team about the new color system. #design #meeting

Tags can appear in any paragraph. They’re treated as organizational metadata, not as visible links.

Note

Tags defined in frontmatter as tags: [work, planning] and inline tags like #work serve the same purpose — they’re just two different ways to add the same information. Use whichever feels more natural.

How tags help

Tags give you a flexible way to organize notes that don’t fit neatly into folder hierarchies. For example:

• A note might live in Work/Projects/ but also be tagged #client-acme and #q1-goals
• A journal entry might be tagged #health or #gratitude so you can find related entries later
• Meeting notes tagged #action-items make it easy to find everything with pending tasks

You can ask Atlas to find notes by tag:

“Show me all my notes tagged #work.”

“Find everything I’ve tagged #client-acme.”

Atlas reading frontmatter

Atlas can extract and use frontmatter from your notes. The extract_frontmatter tool reads all the metadata fields from a specific note:

“What’s the frontmatter in my Project Brief note?”

This is useful when you want Atlas to reason about a note’s metadata — for example, finding all notes of type: meeting from a specific date range.

Atlas reading links and tags

The parse_links tool scans a note and returns all its wiki-links and inline tags in a structured format:

“Parse the links and tags in my Research Summary note.”

Atlas will return:

• All [[wiki-links]] found in the note
• All #inline-tags found in the body
• The tags list from frontmatter (if present)

This is handy for auditing your notes, checking what’s connected to what, or building a summary of a note’s relationships.

Tip

You don’t have to write frontmatter by hand for every note. When you create a note through Atlas (in chat or the Files tab), Atlas automatically fills in title, date, and type for you. You can always add more fields later.