Organizing your vault
Where notes live
Your vault is ~/Documents/Tagdown. Each note is a Markdown file named note-<id>.md, with a small frontmatter block Tagdown maintains for you:
---
id: 4f2c…
title: Atlas launch plan
tags: [project/atlas, planning]
starred: true
folder_id: projects
created: 2026-10-03T09:12:00Z
updated: 2026-10-12T09:42:00Z
---
# Atlas launch plan
…
Folders and tag colours are recorded in .tagdown/vault.json. Because notes are ordinary files, you can back the vault up, sync it, or keep it in git. Changes made outside the app are picked up while it runs.
Folders
- Create a folder from the sidebar’s Library section. Folders can be nested.
- Drag a folder onto another to nest it, or between two folders to reorder.
- New notes are created in the selected folder.
- All Notes shows every note that isn’t archived, journal pages included.
Tags
Write #tag anywhere in a note, or #parent/child for a nested tag. Tags written in the text are collected into the note’s frontmatter when it saves, and are lowercased.
The sidebar shows tags as a tree. Click a tag to list its notes; a parent tag includes the notes of its children. You can also create a tag from the sidebar and pick one of seven colours for it. Tags without a chosen colour get one automatically.
Pinning and filters
Pin a note with the pin button in the editor’s top-right corner. The pills above the note list filter the current view:
| Filter | Shows |
|---|---|
| All | Everything in the current folder or tag |
| Pinned | Pinned notes only |
| Untagged | Notes without any tags |
| Recent | The ten most recently edited notes |
Archive and delete
Deleting a note moves it to the Archive after a confirmation. Archived notes stay on disk but are left out of All Notes, search, and queries. Deleting a note from inside the Archive removes it for good.
Search
Open search with ⌘K or the magnifier in the sidebar. Search is full text, backed by a Tantivy index in .tagdown/search.idx/, and ignores accents.
| Query | Matches |
|---|---|
budget review | Notes containing both words (the last word also matches as a prefix while you type) |
"launch plan" | The exact phrase |
title:atlas | Notes with atlas in the title |
tag:project | Notes tagged project or any tag below it, such as project/atlas |
-draft | Excludes notes containing draft (works with -tag: and -title: too) |
Results show highlighted excerpts. The same syntax works in queries and the tagdown search command.
Wikilinks and backlinks
[[Note title]]links to another note by title (case-insensitive). Typing[[opens autocomplete.- Clicking a link opens the note. If no note has that title yet, Tagdown creates it.
[[Note title#Heading]]jumps to a heading;[[Note title|label]]shows a different label.- When you rename a note, links to it in other notes are updated automatically.
- Below each note, Linked mentions lists the notes that link to it, with the lines that mention it.