Properties & front matter

The Properties panel on the right is not app metadata living in a database. It is the YAML front matter at the top of the file, edited directly.

What you are editing

Set a title and some tags in the panel, and this is what is committed:

q3-planning.md

---
title: Q3 planning
tags:
  - planning
  - draft
created: 2026-08-14T09:12:00.000Z
updated: 2026-08-17T16:40:00.000Z
---

# Q3 planning

The first paragraph of the note…

This is why a note written in ForkLeaf opens correctly in Obsidian, and why the same file can be a page in a Hugo or Jekyll site without being touched.

The built-in fields

Field	Type	Notes
`title`	string	Also shown in the header. If absent, ForkLeaf derives one from the first heading, then from the filename.
`tags`	list of strings	Type them comma-separated; they are written as a YAML list.
`created`	ISO 8601	Set once, on creation.
`updated`	ISO 8601	Refreshed on each save.

Custom properties

Use Add a property… at the bottom of the list. Anything you add is written into the same YAML block, so you can carry fields your static site generator or your own tooling expects — draft, author, slug, weight, whatever.

Front matter is parsed as YAML but written back conservatively. Fields ForkLeaf does not understand are preserved untouched rather than dropped, so editing a note from an existing site will not strip its configuration.

Document statistics

Below the properties: word count, estimated reading time, heading count, diagram count and — when the note has checkboxes — how many are done. All computed from the Markdown, none of it stored anywhere.

The outline

The Outline tab lists every heading, indented by level. Click one to jump to it. If it is empty, the note has no headings yet.