When patterns start to emerge in your note taking, you may start to add a sprinkle of Metadata through the use of Frontmatter and use that to Workbench/Data your space.

Tag it

We’ll continue our journey from Guide/Find and Connect Pages.

On Photo Walk, hover the first line (or the empty area just above it) and click the ⋮ handle to its left, then Add tag.

Photo Walk with the add tag control visible beside its first line. That opens a small attribute form at the top of a new page, with its tags field focused. Type outing and press Enter.

If you followed Guide/Find and Connect Pages, you already have Woodland Hike. Open it by following the link on Photo Walk. Let’s give this outing the same tag.

What is a Tag?

A Tag is a way to classify Objects or “things.” In SilverBullet they can be applied to pages, tasks, (numbered and bulleted) list items, paragraphs, and custom Tag/data encoded in fenced code blocks.

You use tags when you think it’s useful to collect things of this type across your space. The example used here is outing. Other examples could be animal, friend, or project.

Click the outing tag in either page’s attribute form. Its tag page collects the objects carrying that tag, grouped by kind.

The outing tag page lists Photo Walk and Woodland Hike under Pages.

Add attributes

Return to Photo Walk. Use + add attribute below the tag field to record more about the outing.

  1. Type status, then press Enter to add that name. Choose string as its type, enter planned, and press Enter to save the value.
  2. Click + add attribute again, type date, and press Enter. Choose date as its type, then enter 2026-06-14 in the date field or use the date picker.

These values are attributes. You now have a page tagged outing, with a status and a date.

Photo Walk’s visual attribute editor with the outing tag, planned status and June 14, 2026 date.

Add similar metadata to the Woodland Hike page too:

  • Add status as a string, with the value planned.
  • Add date as a date, with the value 2026-06-21.

Under the hood

These page attributes are called frontmatter. To inspect their source, choose Edit source from the form’s ⋯ menu (or Alt-click on the form). The form stores a block like this at the very beginning of Photo Walk:

---
tags: outing
status: planned
date: "2026-06-14"
---

The two --- lines mark the block’s boundaries. Inside, YAML writes each attribute as name: value. Your original notes follow the closing ---. Move the cursor out of the block to return to the form. You can use either editor. They change the same attributes.

Build an outing list

You can use the same attributes to make a live overview of your outings. Open the command palette with Cmd-/ (Mac) Ctrl-/ (Linux/Windows) and run Workbench: Data.

  1. Select page under Root. Beside From, choose #outing in the tagged dropdown.
  2. Keep Table under Select. Keep the name, date and status columns, removing the others. If one is missing, add it using + Column. Set the name column’s kind to Page link so you can open pages from the results. Use the column arrows to put date before status.
  3. Under Order By, click + Order by, choose date, and add the order. Use ascending order so the earlier outing comes first.

The preview should show Photo Walk dated June 14, then Woodland Hike dated June 21, both with status planned. Other pages tagged outing in your space will appear too. If a page or attribute is missing, check its form and allow a moment for saving and indexing.

The Workbench Data tab lists the two outing pages with their dates and status.

This is a query: a saved instruction to find matching objects and show selected attributes. Workbench writes it for you using SilverBullet’s query language.

Keep the list on your index page

Return to your index page with the home button. In a new space this is index. Add a heading, # Outings, and put the cursor on the empty line below it. Keep Workbench open while you do this.

Click Insert at cursor in Workbench, then close the panel. The table now appears below Outings. Its rows come from the original pages, so you can open an outing from the result rather than maintaining a second copy.

The index page shows the two outing pages in a table under Outings. Try changing Woodland Hike’s status to completed, then return to the index page. After saving and indexing, its row should show the new status. You can change it back to planned to restore the example.

To adjust the list later, open its menu (the ⋮ beside it on desktop) and choose Edit in query builder. Workbench opens the existing query and offers Update page. Use that to save changes instead of inserting another copy.

For task lists, see Guide/Task Management.

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