Tags

Tags provide flexible, cross-cutting organization for your notes. Unlike folder hierarchies, tags can apply multiple categories to a single note.

Basic Syntax

Inline Tags

This note is about #productivity and #creativity.

Tags start with # and continue until whitespace or punctuation.

Frontmatter Tags

---
tags:
  - productivity
  - creativity
  - review/needed
---

Tags in frontmatter don’t need the # prefix.

Nested Tags

Create hierarchies with forward slashes:

#project/beta
#status/active
#status/complete

Nested tags allow:

Searching for all #project/* notes
Filtering by specific #project/alpha
Building tag taxonomies

Tag Conventions

Naming

Lowercase: #productivity not #Productivity
Hyphens for spaces: #meeting-notes not #meeting_notes
No special characters: Avoid #tag@special

Common Patterns

Status tags:

#status/review
#status/published
#status/archived

Type tags:

#type/article
#type/reference
#type/meeting

Priority tags:

#priority/medium
#priority/low

Project tags:

#project/q4-planning

Searching by Tag

Using property_search

{
  "properties": {
    "tags": ["productivity"]
  }
}

Search for any of multiple tags (OR logic):

{
  "properties": {
    "tags": ["urgent", "important"]
  }
}

Using grep_notes

Find inline tags:

{
  "query": "#productivity"
}

Tags vs Folders

Tags	Folders
Multiple per note	One location per note
Cross-cutting	Hierarchical
Easy to add/remove	Moving requires links
Flexible	Stable structure

Use tags for:

Status (draft, published)
Priority (high, medium, low)
Topics that cross categories
Temporary groupings

Use folders for:

Primary organization
Stable categories
Physical structure

Tags with Other Systems

With PARA

tags:
  - para/project
  - status/active
  - priority/high

With Johnny Decimal

tags:
  - jd/21.03
  - type/invoice

With Zettelkasten

tags:
  - zettel/permanent
  - topic/productivity

Storage

Tags are extracted to the database during processing and available via property_search.