Notebooks, tags, and history
Use notebooks for structure, tags and statuses for flexible filtering, workspace view for focus, and templates plus revisions for repeatable, recoverable work.
Notebooks
- Create nested notebooks from the sidebar’s + button or a notebook’s New sub-notebook action.
- Rename inline; reorder with Move up/down among siblings; expand or collapse subtrees. Counts show direct notes in each notebook.
- A notebook can be deleted only after it has no sub-notebooks and no untrashed notes. Move or trash those notes first.
- Set the fallback destination for new notes under Preferences → General → Default notebook.
Workspace
Focus one notebook subtree when a project deserves the whole window. Sidebar notebooks scope to that subtree, while status and tag counts recompute for the workspace.
- Press Enter on a notebook row, choose Open as workspace, use Telescope’s ⌘↵ notebook action, or press mod Enter.
- Exit from the workspace banner, with mod Enter again, or by selecting content outside the workspace.
Tags
Type in the editor’s tag field for a filtered suggestion list with usage counts. Use ↑/↓ and Enter or Tab to accept, Esc to close, or choose the explicit Create #name row for a new tag.
- Tags are case-insensitive:
JSandjsare the same tag. The first-seen casing wins for display. - Unused tags disappear automatically because tags are derived from notes, not stored separately.
- From a sidebar tag’s … menu: rename across all notes, merge into another tag, filter the note list, or delete the tag everywhere after confirmation.
- Bulk-tag selected notes from the note-list bulk bar.
Statuses
| Status | Search form | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| No status | status:none | Untriaged notes. |
| Active | status:active | Current work. |
| On hold | status:onHold | Waiting or paused work. |
| Completed | status:completed | Finished work worth keeping. |
| Dropped | status:dropped | Abandoned work without deleting history. |
Change status from the editor header or the bulk bar. Sidebar status rows filter the list with the same status: grammar used by search.
Pin, sort, and bulk
- Pinned notes always sort first.
- Change the default non-search order under Preferences → Editing → Note list order: last updated, newest first, or title A–Z. Search results always rank by relevance instead.
- Select with checkboxes, mod click, ⇧ click ranges, or scoped mod A in the note list. The bulk bar can move, tag, set status, pin, duplicate, export as Markdown, trash, restore, or permanently delete the selection.
Templates
Press mod T for filterable templates with live preview, recents, custom creation, editing, duplication, and deletion. Six read-only built-ins are included:
- Daily Report, Bug fix, Feature planning, Implementation plan, Concept deep dive, and Codebase exploration.
- Applying a template fills an empty open note in place; otherwise it creates a new note.
- Custom templates support
_templatefrontmatter for title, description, tags, notebook, and status, plus date and UUID placeholders. Instruction-only quote blocks are removed from generated notes. - Editing a built-in saves an editable custom copy.
Revisions
devnote snapshots title and body when you switch notes, after 30 seconds without edits, before restoring another revision, and before an in-place template fill. History keeps 50 revisions per note and 500 overall.
- Open history from the editor’s More actions menu or Telescope.
- Preview any snapshot, then restore it. The pre-restore version is snapshotted first, so restores are undoable.