Notes

The note system lets you keep multiple notes open at the same time. Each note is an independent writing space with its own content.

Creating a Note from a File

You can drop any plain-text file directly onto the editor area to create a new note pre-filled with the file's contents.

Supported formats — .md, .mdx, .txt, and .markdown files are recognised by extension. Files with no extension and no MIME type are sniffed for binary content: if the first 8 KB contains no null bytes the file is treated as plain text.

What happens — zudo-text creates a new note in your workspace, writes the dropped file's content into it, and switches the editor to that note. The original file on disk is not touched or linked; its text is copied in. The Note Tray toolbar updates immediately to show the new note number as the active one.

Rejected files — Binary files (detected by a null byte in the first 8 KB) and images are not processed by the text-drop handler. The existing image-drop behaviour (inserting a Markdown image reference) is unaffected.

Note: In the Tauri desktop app, drag-and-drop is handled natively by the OS. In mock/browser mode the HTML5 File API is used instead.

Note Tray Toolbar

The Note Tray toolbar appears below the app toolbar on the Write page (and on the Archives tray — it is the same Note Tray provider pointed at a different directory). It shows every numbered note as a pill and highlights the active one, followed by a pill for each "named" (non-numeric) .md file present in the directory. Click a pill to switch to it.

• Active note — highlighted with accent color, bold text, and a glow effect

• Empty note — shown with reduced opacity and muted colors

• Non-empty note — bordered button with a hover effect

• Named file — a pill for a non-numeric .md file dropped into the directory, rendered after all numbered pills. On a top/bottom bar it shows as (filename.md); on a left/right rail it shows the plain filename, truncated to fit. Named files are not draggable and are not part of the numbered reorder/count system.

The pill shape adapts to bar position: Top/Bottom renders rounded-rect pills; Left/Right renders round pills with larger number typography (a single digit still reads as a circle; multi-digit numbers and named-file labels grow the pill instead of clipping — there is no assumption that numbers stay under 100).

Scroll arrows appear when more notes exist than can fit in the visible area. A plus button (+) at the end creates a new note.

Numbered notes are shown in Descending order by default, so the highest-numbered note appears first. You can choose Ascending order in Settings → General → Note Tray layout → Number order. This setting changes only the display order: it does not rename files or alter their stored numbering. Named files always remain after the numbered group.

Note Tray Toolbar Layout

The Note Tray toolbar can be repositioned and, on a vertical rail, expanded to show note titles alongside the numbers.

Position

The toolbar supports four positions: Top, Left, Right, and Bottom. The default is Top, which places it as a horizontal strip above the editor. Top and Bottom render a horizontal strip; Left and Right render a vertical rail.

There are three ways to change the position:

• In-bar control — a small position icon at the foot of the rail (or trailing edge of the strip) opens a dropdown where you select Top, Left, Right, or Bottom.

• Command palette (Mod+K) — search for any of the following:

  • Move Note Tray Toolbar: Top

  • Move Note Tray Toolbar: Left

  • Move Note Tray Toolbar: Right

  • Move Note Tray Toolbar: Bottom

  • Cycle Note Tray Toolbar Position — steps through the four positions in order.

• General Settings — Settings → General → Note Tray toolbar → Toolbar position dropdown.

An optional keyboard shortcut for "Cycle Note Tray Toolbar Position" can be assigned in Settings → Shortcuts (cycleDraftBarPosition). No default binding is set.

Collapse and Expand (Left/Right only)

On a Left or Right rail the bar has two display modes:

• Collapsed (default) — numbered circular pills, compact width. Click a pill to switch to that note.

• Expanded — full-width title rows showing the note number and a derived title. The active row is highlighted. Click a row to switch to that note.

Toggle between them using:

• The expand/collapse chevron at the foot of the rail (the chevron is disabled and dimmed on Top/Bottom bars, where expanded mode is not available).

• The command palette entry Note Tray Toolbar: Collapse/Expand (titles) — this entry is dimmed with a tooltip explanation when the bar is in Top or Bottom position.

• The Show titles checkbox in Settings → General → Note Tray toolbar (disabled on Top/Bottom).

An optional keyboard shortcut for toggling expanded mode can be assigned in Settings → Shortcuts (toggleDraftBarExpanded). No default binding is set.

How Titles are Derived

In expanded mode each note row shows a derived title alongside its number. The title is resolved in this order:

1. The text of the first level-1 heading (# H1) found in the note body (frontmatter is excluded from this search).

2. If no H1 is present, the first non-empty line near the top of the note, with leading markdown markers (heading markers, blockquote >, list -/*/1.) stripped. The result is truncated to about 80 characters.

3. If the note is entirely empty, no title is shown — the row displays the number only.

Action Cluster

The document actions (schema badge, publish, view-mode toggle, archive, and any configured "Move to…" buttons) are always present in the Note Tray toolbar; their presentation adapts to the bar's orientation:

• Top / Bottom — labelled buttons on the trailing (right) edge of the horizontal strip.

• Left / Right — icon-only buttons stacked at the foot of the vertical rail. A ⋯ overflow button holds any additional "Move to…" buttons that do not fit inline.

To review every page you have published, open Published Items from the command palette or its optional shortcut; see Published Items for the full workflow.

Reordering Notes

Drag any note pill onto another to reorder your notes. The dragged pill and all affected pills animate into their new positions in real time as you drag; the order is committed on drop.

• Entries are renamed in the workspace — reordering rewrites the note entries in inbox/ (e.g. 3.md becomes 1.md), so the numbering in the Note Tray toolbar always matches the stored names. Only slots whose content actually moved are written, so a reorder that changes nothing costs no version history.

• Active note follows — if you drag the active note to a new position, the active-note indicator moves with it so the editor keeps showing the same content.

• Count unchanged — reordering never creates or deletes notes; the total count stays the same.

• Contiguous numbering only — drag-to-reorder is available only while the numbered notes form an unbroken 1..N sequence. If a gap exists (e.g. after a note was deleted on another device), reordering is disabled until you run Tidy Up Notes.

• Named files are not reorderable — they always render after every numbered pill and are unaffected by drag-to-reorder.

Note Count

The number of available notes is configurable. By default, one note is active.

• Keyboard shortcuts cover notes 1–9 (Mod+1 through Mod+9)

• No fixed note-count cap — new notes can be created via the "+" button in the Note Tray toolbar; validateSettings() bounds the active note number and note count to the full u32 range used by the Tauri IPC boundary, not a fixed count like 99.

Creating and Switching Notes

Traversing gaps

Previous Note (Mod+Shift+[) and Next Note (Mod+Shift+]) follow the configured Note Tray order and skip synthetic gaps. For example, if notes 13 and 15 are present but note 14 was archived or deleted, traversal from 15 to 13 still reaches note 13; consecutive gaps are skipped the same way. This works in both Ascending and Descending number order.

Direct numeric navigation is intentionally different: selecting a numbered pill or otherwise requesting a slot that is a synthetic gap is refused. The empty pill remains visible so the missing slot is understandable, but it is not an editable note. This asymmetry is by design — traversal finds the next present note, while direct navigation never invents one.

Mod+0 is not a note shortcut — it selects item 0 in the command palette (when the palette is open), and in the View menu it resets the display zoom to Actual Size.

You can also create a new note or switch notes from the command palette (Mod+K).

Note Persistence

Each note's content is automatically saved to inbox/ in your workspace:

• Note 1 → inbox/1.md

• Note 2 → inbox/2.md

• Note 3 → inbox/3.md

• ...continuing with an unbounded numeric name (N.md) for each additional note

A workspace carried over from before the numbered-note rename may still have legacy draftN.md entries (e.g. draft1.md); these are renamed to N.md automatically the first time the directory is listed, skipped only if N.md already exists (in which case the legacy entry is left in place and surfaces as a named file instead).

Content is auto-saved with a short debounce delay as you type, then encrypted and pushed to the workspace — a save succeeds even offline, because the write is buffered in a durable outbox and retried (see Sync). Your notes themselves are therefore on every device signed into the workspace. Which note is active and how many slots the tray shows are transient, per-device values: they are deliberately kept out of the synced settings document, so two devices can sit on different notes without fighting each other.

Tidy Up Notes

Over time, you may end up with empty gaps between notes (e.g., notes 1, 3, and 7 have content while the others are empty). The Tidy Up Notes command in the command palette compacts these — moving all non-empty notes to consecutive positions starting from note 1.

Summarized Note List

The Summarized Note List dialog (available from the command palette) opens a modal grid showing all notes at a glance. Each note card displays:

• The note number

• The first heading found in the content (h1–h3)

• A preview of the body text (first 200 characters)

• An "(empty)" label for notes with no content

Click any note card to switch to it. Press Escape to close the dialog.

Archiving from a Note

When you archive the current note's content, the note is cleared and the app switches to the next available note. If it was the only note, the editor is simply cleared.