#guide

Use comments to discuss a page alongside its main text, mentions to address someone, and signatures to show who wrote a request or reply. Adding comments and replies requires write access.

Add a comment

SilverBullet leverage’s HTML-style Markdown/Comment syntax to add comments:

<!--
Hello world!
-->

Which Live Previews as follows:

For convenience, a few (slash) commands are available to make adding comments easier.

Put the cursor in the paragraph you want to discuss and run Comment: Add from the command palette, or use /comment on a new line. SilverBullet inserts a comment after the current block. If you select text first, Comment: Add quotes it inside the new comment.

Send a request

Inside a comment you can use at-mentions:

@reviewer Please check this section. -- @author

@reviewer addresses the recipient. The trailing -- @author credits the writer without addressing them. Use account usernames in a real shared space. Typing an arbitrary name creates an Identity on the fly.

Find and answer it

Run Navigate: Mentions, or click a mention to open the Mention Inbox.
Select the recipient from the dropdown. The inbox normally starts with your own identity and groups entries by page. Entries show a compact, formatted excerpt of the mention.
Open the request and write the answer underneath. Mention the original writer if the reply should appear in their inbox:

@author This section is ready for review. -- @reviewer

Use Mention: Sign or /sign to sign the current block as yourself. Signing alone credits the reply.

Resolve a comment or request

Click Resolve on a comment to delete the whole comment, including its replies. Copy any decisions you want to keep into the page’s main text first.

To keep the discussion but clear a request from the inbox, choose Remove mention on its inbox row to remove its @name from the source while keeping the surrounding text. Delete task/item/paragraph removes the containing content and asks for confirmation. These actions require write access. If the page changed since indexing, reopen the mention and retry.

For a completed task, mark its checkbox done. For a page addressed through recipients: frontmatter, edit that field to remove a recipient.

Choose the right notation

[[Person]] links to a page. It does not address an identity.
@reviewer addresses an identity and contributes a recipient relation.
-- @reviewer, — @reviewer and – @reviewer at the end of a line sign a block. A single hyphen and (@reviewer) are not signatures.
authors: credits the page, without attributing unsigned body text.
Account attribution in Revisions records who changed files. A typed signature is self-declared and provides no authentication.

See Markdown/Comment, At-Mention, Recipient, Authorship and Identity for syntax, indexing and API details.