Prefix

Title prefixes provide a customizable way to name notes. Those familiar with Obsidian's Unique note creator core plugin will recognize the concept of Zettelkasten prefixes. Notes created via this plugin in Obsidian might appear as 202308120833 Note Title.md or 202308120833.md.

In Typing, the idea behind prefixes remains the same: enable notes of specific types to have unique names:

1. To ensure short links work consistently.
2. To streamline the process of writing internal links (for example, typing [[PRJ will auto-complete all the projects).
3. To sometimes serve as a handy unique identifier, akin to GitHub Issues.

To set a title prefix for a type, use this syntax:

type TypeName {
    prefix = "PREFIX_CONTENT"
}

PREFIX_CONTENT can be made up of:

1. Interpolations: dynamic segments like {interpolation_name}.
2. Regular text: any text that isn't an interpolation.

You can combine these in various ways:

• {just_interpolation}
• just-text
• text-and-{interpolation}
• text-and-{interpolation}-and-{other_interpolation}

Supported Interpolations

{serial}

This represents the serial number of the note of a specific type. So, if you set the prefix as P{serial}, your notes will start with:

• P1
• P2
• P3
• ...

{date_compact}

This represents the current datetime, accurate to one second. It's compressed to a string of 6-7 characters (currently always 6, but will become 7 in 2062). With the prefix A-{date_compact}, note names depend on their creation time, for example:

• A-M1A9WM
• A-N6BF3d
• A-N869mz

More interpolations may be introduced in upcoming updates if requested. In the future, other plugins will have a way to register custom interpolations.

Examples

type Meeting {
    folder = "typed/meeting"
    prefix = "MTN-{serial}"
}

type Event {
    folder = "typed/event"
    prefix = "E-{serial}"
}

type Zettelkasten {
    folder = "typed/zettelkasten"
    prefix = "ZK-{date_compact}"
}