The five kinds of note

Every note is one of five kinds. The kind determines its controls: Tasks and Skills have steps, Forms have questions, and Reports collect results.

Writing a note

The note editor supports Markdown-style headings, lists, quotes, and emphasis, alongside references and structured blocks. Use sections to organise authored notes; Report sections are generated from their sources.

Three rules carry most of it:

• ## headings are the note's sections, and the sections are its shape. A reader takes the model of the work from them before reading a line, so use them to expose that model rather than to decorate.
• Every line has a stable id. That id is how anything else addresses part of a note — what a citation points at, what a handoff names. It belongs to the line, not to its position: "the second step" is not an address.
• What a step depends on is named inside the sentence, in the words of the sentence, never gathered into a list at the end.

Use @ to reference a resource or person, or declare a document output or milestone. Use / to insert content or run a command.

Task

A Task performs work. Its statements are runnable steps: read this, review that against those standards, record the result, ask this person to approve it.

A Task has to be activated before it can run, and each run follows the version sealed at activation.

Review the [Acme MSA] against the [Vendor Terms Rulebook].
Record the findings for [Maya].
Ask [Maya] to approve the agreement before signing.

Tasks reference rulebook and extraction blocks rather than defining them. Put reusable review criteria in a Skill and reference it from the Task. The Task can still include instructions specific to the agreement being reviewed.

Skill

A Skill is a reusable method. It holds the way you want a kind of work done — the instructions and the standards — so a Task can name it instead of restating it.

Review the [Acme MSA] using [Vendor Review].

A Skill can hold rulebook and extraction blocks. Type / to insert them and write the method around them. A Task that references the Skill can use those instructions and standards without restating them.

Report

A Report collects results from its sources. Use @ to add documents, rulebooks, extractions, or other notes, then choose Activate to open the Report for incoming results. Its sections are generated rather than authored like Task steps.

Form

A Form asks for values. It compiles no steps and performs no work — it has questions, and someone answers them.

A Form is activated like a Task, so that a response answers a sealed version of the questions rather than whatever the form happens to say when it is opened. A Task that references a Form cannot run until that Form is activated too.

General

A General note is authored prose. Meeting notes, a position you want to keep, a draft of your thinking. It does not run; it is a place to write. Its / menu also lets you insert rulebook and extraction blocks for other notes to reference.

Seraa keeps one General note per day as your daily note. It is the default place for anything that has not yet become a Task.