Frontmatter

Frontmatter is the optional YAML block at the top of a .md / .mdx file, fenced by ---. Every field is optional — Verto treats the file system as the schema and fills in sensible fallbacks for anything you leave out. This page is the complete reference for the fields Verto reads (parsed in lib/content-source/tree.ts).

---
title: My Document
description: Shown in listings and meta tags.
date: "2026-05-14"
updated: "2026-06-01"
author: Me
tags: ["guide", "reference"]
status: published
order: 1
cover: /images/cover.png
draft: false
hidden: false
lang: en
toc: { minDepth: 2, maxDepth: 3 }
---

Your content here.

Field reference

Titles and descriptions

title is what shows in the sidebar, breadcrumbs, browser tab, and link previews. When omitted, Verto uses the first # H1 in the body; failing that, it humanizes the filename (my-cool-doc.mdx → "My Cool Doc").

description populates directory listings and <meta> tags. When omitted, Verto extracts the first real paragraph (skipping headings and code), strips Markdown, and truncates it to roughly 200 characters.

Dates: date vs updated

• date is the document's primary date — used for blog-style sorting (newer first) and shown in the UI.
• updated records a later revision and takes precedence over the file's modification time when Verto displays "Updated …".

Sorting: order

order is the primary sort key among siblings — lower numbers come first. Pages without an order sort after those that have one, falling back to date (newer first) and then title. See Navigation → Sorting order for the full comparison rules, and navigation.json for setting order without editing a file's frontmatter.

Visibility: draft vs hidden

Both keep a page out of the sidebar, prev/next, and directory indexes — but they differ in when:

Use draft for work-in-progress you still want to see locally; use hidden to suppress a page everywhere.

Table of contents: toc

By default Verto builds an "On this page" TOC from your H2 and H3 headings. Override it per page:

• toc: false — hide the TOC for this page entirely.
• toc: { minDepth, maxDepth } — change which heading levels are captured (defaults are minDepth: 2, maxDepth: 3; H1 is always reserved for the title).

---
title: "Deep page"
toc:
  minDepth: 2
  maxDepth: 4
---

Other fields

• author — displayed on article-style pages and available for listings.
• tags — an array of strings; surfaced in the UI and useful for grouping.
• status — a single workflow label, such as draft, reading, evergreen, or published; surfaced in the Library overview and linked to /read/status/<status> collection views. On the home page it also groups documents onto a read-only reading-workflow board, where common synonyms map to Unread, Reading, or Done columns (anything unrecognized falls into an Other column, and documents without a status are treated as unread).
• cover — an image URL or path used as the page's cover/preview image.
• lang — the document's language code, for multi-language vaults.

Related

• Navigation — how the tree, sorting, and sidebar are built
• navigation.json — override title / order / hidden without touching frontmatter
• MDX Authoring — the full guide to writing document bodies