Notes

Trunkbase doesn't store a duplicate of your file. It creates a decomposed record called a Note.

A Note is a single record of your document, broken down into YAML frontmatter (the details) and Markdown (the content). It's the clean, readable version of your file — context an AI model can actually read: the real text, headings, lists, and tables, stripped of the formatting noise.

One record, three pieces

1. The note — a Markdown file with the document's real structure. This is the spine, always produced.
2. The details — a small companion file holding everything about the document: title, author, dates, page count, language, where it came from. In the app you see this as the Metadata and Provenance panels — tidy labels and values, never raw code.
3. The assets — figures and images pulled out of the document, saved alongside.

The three pieces travel as one unit — move, rename, or delete a note and its details and assets go with it. Trunkbase calls this whole unit a record.

Why Markdown?

Because it's the most durable format there is: plain text with light formatting that every app — including every AI — can read. Your knowledge isn't locked inside a proprietary database; it's sitting in your vault as files you could open in Notepad ten years from now.

Need more than Markdown? Depending on your use case, a record can also be expanded into HTML, JSON, full YAML, and DocTags via the Format picker. Most people never touch this — Markdown carries the day.

Notes connect

Links inside notes are ordinary [[wikilinks]]; shared tags and similarity connect notes further. These relationships are stored in the files themselves, and they're what the knowledge graph is built from — every note is a node the moment it's created.