Docs/Notes/Typed notes

Typed notes

Most notes are just notes. But some are clearly a kind of thing — a book you're reading, a person you keep meeting, a project with a deadline. Give a note a type and Minerva knows what to expect from it: the fields it should have, the icon it wears in every list, and how it looks when you gather all of its kind together. It's still an ordinary markdown note underneath, and you can take the type off again at any time.

Making a note typed

A note is typed when its properties include a type: line naming one of your object types — type: book. You rarely write that by hand. There are a few ways to get there:

When you create it
The New Note dialog offers your types alongside the blank note. Pick one and the note starts out with its type: already set, plus any starter text the type provides.
While you're writing
Type / at the start of a line, or after a space, anywhere in a note and your types appear in the autocomplete — /Book, /Person. Choosing one creates a new note of that type and puts a link to it where you were typing, so you can mention a new book mid-sentence without leaving the keyboard. The note you're writing in keeps its own type.
To a note you already have
Run Treat This Note as a Type… from the command palette and pick a type to give the note you're looking at. Its text and existing properties are left exactly as they are — only type: is added — and the Properties panel opens so you can fill in the gaps.
Let the assistant suggest
Analysis → Organization → Infer Types for Notes looks over your untyped notes and suggests a type for each one that clearly fits a type you already have — a note with an author and an ISBN is a Book. Each suggestion is filed separately in the Proposals panel, and nothing changes until you approve it; approving just adds the type: line.
Nothing is invented for you

Typing an existing note never writes values you didn't provide. If the note already has an author property and the type declares one, they simply line up. Everything else starts empty and stays that way until you fill it in.

What the type gives the note

The type is a small description of what notes of its kind look like. Each part of it shows up somewhere:

Fields
The properties this kind of note is expected to have — a Book's author and rating, a Meeting's date and attendees. They appear as a form at the top of the Properties panel, including the ones you haven't filled in yet.
Icon and color
A single character — 📖, 👤 — that marks every note of this type wherever notes are listed, tinted with the type's color.
Card fields
The handful of fields worth showing when the note appears as a card — when another note links to it on a line of its own (see below).
Cover
Which field holds a picture, so a gallery of these notes can show it.
Parent type
A more general type this one is a kind of. A Novel with Book as its parent inherits Book's fields, and shows up whenever you ask for Books. Minerva's own Meeting is a kind of Event: it has an Event's date, end, location and attendees, plus an organizer, and every meeting appears among your Events.

All of that is defined once, per type, in Settings → Object Types — not per note.

Filling in the fields

Open the Properties panel on a typed note and its fields are laid out as a form above its other properties. Each field gets the control that suits it: a list of choices for a field with fixed options, a date picker for a date, a typed date-and-time box for a datetime, a number box for a number. A link field takes a [[Note]], and a location takes a latitude and longitude, like 48.8584,2.2945. Fields the note hasn't filled in yet are still shown, so the form answers "what does a Book need?" rather than only "what has this note got?"

Nothing is required. Leaving a field empty is perfectly fine — it just means you don't know that yet, or it doesn't apply.

Where typed notes show up

In every list of notes
The type's icon replaces the usual page icon in the Notes tree, on tabs, in Quick switch, in backlinks, and in bookmarks — so a folder of mixed notes is readable at a glance.
In the Objects panel
The Objects panel groups your notes by type, so you can see every Book you have without having put them in a folder together.
As a collection
Opening a type gives you every note of that kind as a list, a table of their fields, or a gallery of cover images.
As a card when you link to one
Put a link to a typed note on a line by itself and the preview shows it as a card: the note's cover picture or its type's icon, its title, and the type's card fields. Export the note holding the link and the export shows the same card. A cover appears as a picture only when its value is a web address (starting http:// or https://); otherwise the card shows the icon. A link in the middle of a sentence stays an ordinary link. See Links.
On a map
A type with a location field, like the stock Place, can show its notes as pins on a map.
In queries
Types become part of your project's graph, so you can ask for them directly — every Book published before 1970, say. Some types also count as a class from a standard vocabulary: a Claim note is found by anything that looks for claims, a Person by anything that looks for foaf:Person. The skills that pull claims out of a note or build a glossary file their results as Claim and Glossary Term notes.

It's still an ordinary note

Typing a note doesn't move it, lock it, or change how you write in it. The file stays plain markdown in the same folder, with one extra line in its properties. Delete that type: line and it's an untyped note again — the fields you filled in stay behind as ordinary properties, because that's all they ever were.

Renaming a type keeps your notes

If you rename a type in Settings, the notes using it are updated to match. Their values aren't touched — only the name of the kind of thing they are.