laurigates/vault-frontmatter

Vault Frontmatter Maintenance

When to Use This Skill

| Use this skill when... | Use the alternative instead when... | |---|---| | Bulk-stripping legacy id: fields or null tags: entries across many .md files offline | Setting a single property on one live note via the running CLI — use properties | | Cleaning up unrendered {{title}} / <% tp.file.cursor() %> placeholders inside YAML | Repairing those markers in note body text — use vault-templates | | Adding missing frontmatter blocks to notes that lack one | Consolidating the actual tag values once the YAML structure is sound — use vault-tags |

Offline, file-level repair of YAML frontmatter. Complements the properties skill (which uses the Obsidian CLI) by operating on .md files directly — safe for bulk mechanical passes.

When to Use

• Stripping the legacy id: field from a batch of notes
• Removing unrendered Templater markers (<% tp.file.cursor() %>, {{title}})
• Cleaning up null entries inside tags: lists
• Adding missing frontmatter blocks to notes that lack one
• Ensuring FVH notes carry context: fvh
• Normalizing tag case / pluralization drift

Canonical Frontmatter Shape

---
tags:
  - 🛠️/neovim       # emoji-prefixed category tag
  - 📝/notes         # note-type tag
context: fvh         # FVH notes only
---

Rules:

1. No id: field — removed from all current templates.
2. 2–3 tags per note; every tag either emoji/subcategory or a bare note-type like 📝/moc.
3. No bare emoji placeholders (📝, 🌱, 📝/🌱) — they indicate the tag was never specified.
4. No null tag values — YAML must be valid.
5. FVH/* notes carry context: fvh; personal notes omit the field.

Detection Patterns

| Issue | Grep pattern | Notes | |-------|--------------|-------| | Legacy id: | ^id: inside frontmatter block | Strip entire line | | Bare placeholder tag | YAML tag value exactly 📝, 🌱, or 📝/🌱 | Remove if note has other useful tags; else leave | | Null tag | YAML tag value literally null | Remove list entry | | Templater leak | <% tp\. or \{\{title\}\} or \{\{date\}\} | Replace {{title}} with filename stem; strip <% tp.* %> | | Corrupt emoji | Tag contains Unicode replacement char \ufffd | Flag for manual fix — don't guess | | Missing FVH context | File under FVH/ without context: fvh | Add the line |

Edit Recipes

Strip legacy id

Before:

---
id: 20240118235900
tags: [🛠️/neovim]
---

After:

---
tags: [🛠️/neovim]
---

Remove bare placeholder (keeping useful tags)

Before:

tags:
  - 📝
  - 🛠️/ansible

After:

tags:
  - 🛠️/ansible

Legacy MOC tag → current

Before:

tags:
  - 🗺️

After:

tags:
  - 📝/moc

Edit Pattern

Use Edit with small targeted old_string / new_string replacements that preserve exact indentation. Never rewrite whole files when a line edit suffices — it minimizes the commit diff and makes reviews easy.

For bulk fixes across many files, drive from a script that emits one Edit call per file rather than running sed in Bash. The commit-per-category pattern (fix(tags): strip bare 📝 from 639 notes) relies on keeping all edits in one logical batch.

Safety

• Never write to .obsidian/, .claude/, .git/, Files/. The safety hook enforces this.
• Never add frontmatter to daily notes in Notes/ or FVH/notes/ without verifying — they often don't need any.
• When in doubt about what a placeholder tag meant, leave the note unchanged and report it rather than guess.

Related Skills

• properties — runtime property ops via Obsidian CLI (requires running Obsidian)
• vault-tags — tag taxonomy consolidation rules
• vault-templates — Templater convention reference