A Markdown folder is readable without a contract. The contract declares note types, permitted fields and statuses, course and map types, scan scope, and command-line privacy boundaries.

These declarations belong in System/schemas/vault-schema.toml. Use this vault's file as a starting point. ^single-source

It replaces An older approach, which inferred types from folders.

The shape of it

This excerpt declares types and the default status vocabulary:

[enums]
type = ["note", "lesson", "study-path", "moc", "concept", "inbox"]

[enums.status]
note = ["draft", "ready", "published", "archived"]

[[lifecycle]] rows define allowed status transitions; see The status lifecycle. The excerpt is not a complete contract.

When it cannot be read

An unreadable or invalid contract produces a page notice and disables the status control, courses and maps. Reading, folder navigation and search remain available. The check, coverage and exists commands refuse to run without a usable contract and privacy declaration.

Frontmatter is the YAML block between two --- lines at the start of a note. It holds fields such as title, type, status and domain.

The contract declares permitted fields and values. Within its knowledge scope, an undeclared field is a diagnostic. The status control rewrites only the status value, preserving the rest of the file.