Frontmatter

Every Context Nest document begins with a YAML frontmatter block delimited by ---. The frontmatter contains structured metadata that the resolver, validator, and index generator use.

Required fields

Field	Type	Description
`title`	string	Human-readable title (1–200 characters)

Standard fields

Field	Type	Default	Description
`type`	string	`document`	Node type (see Node Types)
`tags`	string[]	`[]`	Tags prefixed with `#` (e.g. `["#engineering", "#api"]`)
`status`	string	`draft`	`draft` or `published`
`version`	integer	`1`	Current version number (auto-incremented on publish)
`author`	string	—	Author identifier
`description`	string	—	Brief description for index listings
`created_at`	ISO 8601	—	Creation timestamp
`updated_at`	ISO 8601	—	Last update timestamp
`derived_from`	string	—	`contextnest://` URI of the source document

Source node fields

Source nodes include an additional source block:


source:
  transport: mcp          # mcp, rest, cli, or file
  server: jira             # Server name from config.yaml registry
  tools:                   # Tools used by this source
    - jira_get_sprint_issues
  depends_on:              # Other sources this depends on
    - contextnest://sources/project-config
  cache_ttl: 300           # Cache lifetime in seconds

See Source Nodes for the full source frontmatter reference.

Example


---
title: "Architecture Overview"
type: document
tags: ["#engineering", "#architecture"]
status: published
version: 4
author: "alice@example.com"
description: "High-level system architecture and key decisions"
created_at: "2026-01-15T10:00:00Z"
updated_at: "2026-03-10T14:30:00Z"
---