Organizing Notes

Organizing Notes

Three consistency passes — frontmatter, tags, links — applied whenever a note is touched. The knowledge base's conventions.md is the authority; read it first. If none exists, offer /second-brain:setting-up-knowledge-base before proceeding.

Frontmatter

On every note whose content or frontmatter you change:

1. Frontmatter exists — block starts --- on line 1; add if missing
2. type: matches the note's role — per the conventions enum
3. Keys are canonical — migrate drifted forms (date_created → created, last_updated → modified, etc.)
4. modified: bumped to today — when you changed content or frontmatter. A pure move or rename does not bump modified (the content is unchanged); don't rewrite timestamps across files you're only relocating.

Rules: dates absolute YYYY-MM-DD; tags: always a YAML list; snake_case keys; don't invent metadata you can't derive.

Tags

Tags are a controlled vocabulary — reuse before inventing.

1. Read the note's existing tags and the conventions' taxonomy
2. Apply matching namespaced tags (area/..., status/...)
3. Introduce a new tag only when ALL hold: no existing tag fits, the concept will recur across notes, and someone would actually query it
4. Never tag entities — client/acme is wrong; a link to the acme hub is right
5. Never tag what folder + title already say

Links

Connections compound. When touching a note, look for missed link opportunities:

Entity mentions — first mention of any person, org, tool, or project that has a hub page gets linked ([[Name]] or [Name](path) per the conventions' link style). Don't over-link: once per note plus where prose demands it.

Note-to-note — when a note discusses a topic, decision, or event that lives in another note, link the other note. Search for candidates before assuming none exist.

Hub creation — an entity appearing in ≥3 notes without a hub gets one: a short page (1–2 sentences of real content, not a bare stub) in the hubs folder, with the entity's obvious aliases. Then backfill links in the mentioning notes so the hub is immediately connected.

Never link: inside code blocks, URLs, or file paths; ambiguous names (two different "Davids" — skip rather than guess); generic capitalized words; inside existing links.

Bias conservative: a missed marginal link is cheaper than a wrong one.

Batch cleanups

Asked to "clean up" or "normalize" the whole base:

1. Safety pre-flight — confirm the base is under version control with a clean working tree (git status), or take a backup, before any bulk write. A batch frontmatter pass is hard to undo by hand; a clean checkpoint makes it one command.
2. Exclude off-limits paths — always skip .obsidian/, .git/, .trash/, archive folders, and templates/ (template placeholders break when frontmatter is injected), plus anything the conventions' Off-limits section names. These defaults hold even if the conventions file is silent.
3. Inventory first — report drifted frontmatter, orphan tags, unlinked entity mentions as counts before changing anything
4. Confirm scope with the user, then fix mechanically
5. Summarize — files touched, by which pass, what was excluded and why