agent-skills/denote/SKILL.md

name	intent	description
denote	notes, documentation, knowledge	Denote file format conventions for timestamped notes. Use when creating, naming, or linking structured note files in the ~/doc/ hierarchy.

Denote File Format

Denote is an Emacs structured note-taking system by Protesilaos Stavrou. It uses a strict filename convention to encode metadata.

File Naming Convention

YYYYMMDDThhmmss--title-in-lowercase-alphanumeric__tag1_tag2_tagN.ext

Components:

• Timestamp: date +%Y%m%dT%H%M%S — ISO 8601 compact, seconds precision
• Title: lowercase, alphanumeric characters and hyphens only (no spaces, no underscores)
• Tags: lowercase alphanumeric, underscore-separated, after double-underscore. CRITICAL: Never use hyphens, underscores, or special characters in tag frontmatter!

Examples:

• 20260128T133522--example-flow__ref.md
• 20260126T144226--architecture-notes__component1_component2_tag3.md

Frontmatter Format

Every Denote file begins with YAML frontmatter that mirrors the filename:

---
title:      Title In Title Case
date:       YYYY-MM-DD Day HH:MM
tags:       [tag1, tag2]
identifier: YYYYMMDDThhmmss
verified:   YYYY-MM-DD
source:     code-inspection | documentation | online | verbal | inferred
---

# Title

Content here.

Provenance fields (for agent-kb entries):

• verified: Date last confirmed against code (update on confirmation)
• source: How the knowledge was obtained
  • code-inspection — directly verified in source code
  • documentation — from internal docs
  • online — from external online documentation
  • verbal — expert opinion, discussion, tacit knowledge
  • inferred — derived from training data (lowest priority)

If a source has a URL, add a ## Sources section at the bottom.

Cross-References

Link to other Denote entries using the identifier:

See denote:20260130T171856 for query details.

Do not automatically follow cross-references. Only load referenced documents if directly relevant to the current question.

Looking Up an Entry by Identifier

grep -r "20260130T171856" ~/doc/agent-kb/

Or search by keyword:

grep -il "keyword" ~/doc/agent-kb/*.md