Notes

Notes are Markdown files. YAML frontmatter gives pkm structured fields for search, filtering, type templates, and graph resolution.

Basic Note

---
title: Architecture Decision: Switch to Kafka
aliases:
  - Architecture Decision: Switch to Kafka
tags:
  - architecture
  - kafka
type: note
created: 2026-04-25
modified: 2026-04-25
---

# Architecture Decision: Switch to Kafka

## Context

## Decision

## Consequences

Title Derivation

When a note has no title, pkm derives one from:

1. The first H1 heading
2. The filename stem

This keeps hand-written Markdown indexable.

Filenames

Generated filenames preserve readable names while replacing unsafe link and path characters.

DAG: user_events_daily -> DAG - user_events_daily.md

When the filename differs from the title, pkm adds the original title as an alias.

Metadata

pkm indexes common fields like tags, aliases, type, created, and modified. It also indexes arbitrary top-level YAML properties, so custom note types can define their own metadata without schema changes.