Note types

Every note in a vault has a type: in its frontmatter. Cuaderno parses that frontmatter into a typed structure — if it parses, it’s valid. There are twelve note types.

Plus the inbox: raw, untyped captures in inbox/ awaiting triage.

The journal: daily, weekly, and monthly

The chronological backbone. Daily notes collect timestamped log lines plus structured sections (Intention, Agenda, Standup, Meeting). Weekly notes hold the review (Wins, Challenges, One Improvement) and the week’s single goal. Monthly notes hold the higher-altitude review (Wins, Themes, Next Month’s Focus) and a ## Weeks block that links the month’s weekly notes rather than copying them, so the weeks stay the source of truth. All three are append-only — the historical record only grows.

project — the one mutable map

Projects are the only freely-mutable note type. A project carries a Current State, a list of next actions (inline bullets by default), milestones, and waiting-on items. When you update the Current State, the previous state is auto-logged to today’s daily note first, so history is never lost (see Business rules). At most five projects are active at once; the rest live parked in projects/_parked/.

action — inline by default, a note when it grows

An action’s default form is a checkbox bullet on its project map. That’s usually all you need. When a single action becomes an investigation spanning days and artefacts, you promote it to a manifest action note (heavier: status, energy, criteria, links). Completing an action removes the bullet, logs it, and — if it had a note — archives that note to actions/_done/<year>/. See Actions.

portfolio + evidence — dossiers per question

A portfolio is a folder named for a question, with an _index.md (the portfolio note) and a set of evidence notes filed into it over time. Each evidence note records a source and an origin (a wikilink to whatever produced it). Evidence is append-only — a portfolio is a growing record. See Research and evidence.

stewardship + tracking — long-haul responsibilities

A stewardship is a dashboard for something you tend indefinitely. It can be flat (a single stewardships/<slug>.md) or expanded (a stewardships/<slug>/ folder with _index.md, a tracking/ subfolder for time-series entries, and a routines/ subfolder for reference docs). Expanded stewardships accept tracking notes via cdno track. See Stewardships and tracking.

question — important questions, kept visible

A question note has a domain (research or life) and a status (active, parked, answered, retired). Questions anchor portfolios and projects (via the core_question link). List the active ones any time with cdno questions.

commitment — dated promises

A standalone promise with a hard due: date and a context. On fulfilment it moves to commitments/_done/<year>/. Standalone commitments are one of four sources feeding the aggregated commitments view.

These twelve are a closed set with built-in behaviour. For an entity they don’t cover (people, books, clients), you can declare a schema-only custom note type in config.toml — a folder, field rules, and a template, with no recompile (see the worked Tracking people recipe).

For the exact frontmatter fields of each type, see Frontmatter fields. Next: Vault structure.