Page types and frontmatter

Every page in Quaid has a type declared in its frontmatter. The type drives ingestion classification, default page templates, and search-time hints (e.g. wing assignment). This page lists the recognized types and the frontmatter fields each one uses.

Frontmatter shape

The frontmatter is YAML. Required fields apply to every page; everything else is type-specific or optional.

---
title: Alice Example          # required
type: person                   # required
slug: people/alice             # optional; inferred from path on import
summary: Founder, RiverAI      # optional but recommended
tags: [infra, ops]             # optional
wing: people                   # optional; usually derived
room: founders                 # optional; usually derived
links:                         # optional inline links
  - to: companies/river-ai
    relationship: founder_of
    valid_from: 2024-01-15
---

The whole frontmatter block is preserved as JSON in pages.frontmatter. Anything beyond the recognized fields is round-tripped untouched.

Page model: compiled truth + timeline

Every page body splits into two halves separated by --- (after the frontmatter):

# Alice Example

Above the line: compiled truth.
Always-current summary, never appended.

---

## Timeline

- 2026-04-14 — Met at a demo day.
- 2026-04-22 — Replied to outreach; intro to Bob.

The compiled-truth section (above the line) represents the current state of the world, edited in place. The timeline (below the line) is append-only evidence. See Compiled truth + timeline for the philosophy.

Recognized types

Type	Use for	Wing default
person	Individual humans	people
company	Organizations, vendors, customers	companies
deal	Business opportunities, sales cycles	deals
project	Active projects (PARA: Projects)	projects
area	Ongoing responsibilities (PARA: Areas)	areas
resource	Reference material (PARA: Resources)	resources
archive	Inactive material (PARA: Archives)	archives
concept	Abstract concepts, terms, taxonomies	concepts
original	Your own thinking — essays, notes, drafts	originals
source	External material attributed to a source	sources
media	Articles, podcasts, videos referenced	media
decision	Decisions made, with rationale	decisions
commitment	Things you’ve committed to others	commitments
action_item	Trackable to-dos with an owner	actions
journal	Daily journal entries	journal

quaid import infers type from PARA-style singular or plural folders (project(s)/, area(s)/, etc.) after stripping numeric prefixes when no explicit type is set in frontmatter.

Type-specific conventions

person

Common fields:

• roles: list of strings ([founder, engineer])
• affiliations: list of {company, role, valid_from, valid_until}
• contact: {email, phone, ...} — stored verbatim, treat with care

company

• domain, hq, stage, headcount
• funding: list of rounds ({round, amount, date, lead})

deal

• status: prospect / qualified / negotiation / won / lost
• expected_close, value
• parties: list of slugs

decision / commitment

• made_at (ISO date)
• owner (slug)
• revisit_at (optional)

action_item

• owner (slug)
• due (ISO date)
• status: open / done / cancelled

journal

• date (ISO date) — required for journal entries
• Page slug typically matches the date (journal/2026-04-25).

Wing and room

wing and room are derived during ingestion from the slug and content (see core::palace). They power filtered search (quaid search "river" --wing companies) and the memory-palace classification used by progressive retrieval. You can override them in frontmatter, but the defaults are usually correct.

Slug rules

• Slashes are allowed (people/alice, journal/2026-04-25).
• ASCII lower-case alphanumerics, dashes, slashes, and _ only. The MCP server validates slugs and rejects invalid characters.
• Bare slugs resolve to the default collection. Use <collection>::<slug> to disambiguate when more than one collection is attached.

Linking syntax

Pages may include wiki-style links inside the body — [[people/alice]] — which the importer parses into links rows with source_kind = 'wiki_link'. Programmatic links created via memory_link or quaid link carry source_kind = 'programmatic'. See Build a knowledge graph.