Metadata

Metadata is structured data about your page. MoreInfo supports a Jekyll-compatible "Front Matter" block of metadata as well as a less intrusive end of file block of metadata.

A piece of metadata is defined by a "key," followed by a colon and zero or more spaces, then the "value." MoreInfo supports metadata in text, date (or date/time), array, or boolean formats. Some keys are reserved for special use by MI, but you are free to define your own.

Think of metadata as adding columns to the table/spreadsheet of your pages, ad hoc when you need it. You'll soon develop your own key/value pairs that you use to help yourself organize and surface your notes.

Front-Matter metadata is delimited by three-dash lines above and below it:

---
title: My Note
tags: work, project
due: 2026-05-01
---

Note content starts here.

MoreInfo also supports metadata at the end of the file, starting with the email ".sig" line of two dashes followed by a space. Metadata then continues to the end of the file.

Note content ends here.

-- 
title: My Note
tags: work, project
due: 2026-05-01

Both versions of metadata are allowed in the same page. When keys conflict, the
sig block key/value pair will be used.

Singular and Plural Keys

MoreInfo normalises every key to its singular form before storing it. This means tag: and tags: are identical, alias: and aliases: are identical, and any custom key you define works the same way — room: and rooms: both store under room. The singular form is preferred and always works, even when the value is an array. You never need to remember which form a key uses.

Metadata Widget

By default, any page with metadata opened in the editor will cause the Metadata Widget to appear. This widget shows all the key/value pairs found in the page. You can interact with the Metadata Widget in the following ways:

• single-clicking on the value edits the value
• double-clicking on the value shows all notes across your entire datastore containing that key/value pair in its metadata
• single-clicking on the key edits the key
• double-clicking on the key shows all notes across your entire datastore containing that key in its metadata, grouped by value

Data types

Metadata is weekly typed with four types: Strings, Arrays, Date/Time, and Booleans.

Array values

Any metadata value that contains commas is treated as an array. Three syntaxes are equivalent:

tags: work, planning, q2
tags: [work, planning, q2]
tags: ["work", "planning", "q2"]

The bracket forms are useful when a value contains a comma that should not be treated as a delimiter — wrap the whole value in quotes within the brackets, or quote the value directly:

note: "one, two, three"   ← stored as a single string, not an array

Date values

If the value can be parsed by the Javascript "chrono-mode" library, The value is treated as a date (or date+time). This allows not only for date patterns (like 'YYYY-MM-DD'), but also human-parsable dates like 'last Monday,' 'tomorrow', or '1st Tuesday each month.'

Boolean values

A variable is considered a boolean when its value is one and only one of the following pairs (case insensitive): True/False, T/F, 1/0, Yes/No, Y/N, On/Off. In each case, the former value results to a "TRUE" value and the latter to "FALSE."

String values

Anything not handled by the above types is considered as a string value.

Built-In Keys

You are free to choose whatever keys you'd like to help you organize your datastore. However, MoreInfo has a few keys with special meaning to the datastore. You should not use these keys for other purposes:

alias

Aliases are treated the same as page titles when linking; they can be defined as linked references, or found as unlinked references. The keys "alias" and "aliases" are interchangable; both keys can hold a single item or an array of items.

alias: steve

aliases: Steve, Steven, Steve-o, SRT

category

Category answers the question "What kind of thing does this page represent?" A page can have up to one category. Useful for organizing pages like people, projects, meetings, etc. This is best used within a Template for scaffolding pages.

category: person

favorite

A boolean value marking this page as a favorite. Favorites can be listed on a sidebar by the Favorites Widget. The favorite flag can be toggled either by setting this metadata or clicking the star in the top right of the title area.

favorite: true

tag

Tags answer the question "What concepts is this page about?". The keys "tag" and "tags" are interchangable. Both keys can hold a single entry or an array of entries.

tag: planning

tags: work, planning, q2

Tags are special in that they can appear anywhere in the text. While writing, add an octothorpe (#) before any word to turn that into a tag. These tags do not show in the explicit metadata but will show as tags in the Metadata Widget, and are considered tags in every other sense.

So, while writing along you can just mark anything as a tag in #MoreInfo.

Tags are considered as case insensitive when matching.

While tags are searchable like any other metadata, a separate Tags Widget is available for navigating via tags.

title

Overrides the file name as the display title of the note. The title will be what wikilinks will link to, as well as the CamelCase version of the title.

The title can be set in metadata for journal pages, though the page will continue to be linkable at [[YYYY-MM-DD]].

title: "Q2 Planning Session"

A note about title vs. filename

Title and Filename are separate concepts; meaning only that a page needs a filename that can be extracted from a title, and a file needs a title, that can be extracted from a filename. But this only happens once to give the page an initial filename on the filesystem. Changing the title will never change the filename, once the page exists on disk. MI was designed for the user not to think about filenames, just about page content and metadata.

created: 2026-05-12

Custom Keys

Any key you add is stored in the file and indexed for search. Custom keys can be used to build filtered views in the widget panel or queried with key:value syntax in search.

status: in-progress
project: MoreInfo Docs
priority: high