Areas and projects.

Areas and projects give your todos somewhere to live, and your notes too. An area is a part of your life that goes on, such as Home or Work. A project is something you finish, such as a kitchen or a talk, usually inside an area. Todos sit in a project or an area, or wait in the Inbox until you sort them.

Areas and projects are part of Pro. So are the task markers beyond [ ] and [x]. :todos is free.

Starting the Pro trial in a vault with no areas or projects of its own adds a guide: two areas, Work life and Home life, with a Start here project whose todos each teach a key by being done, and an example project. They're ordinary files: rename them, change them or delete them. They're added once per Mac, and never into a vault that already has areas or projects.

Areas

:area Home makes an area called Home. An area's page shows its description, its projects, the todos kept in the area itself, and the notes filed in it.

The description is the first paragraph of the area's file. Each area can have an icon from the same set as icons in text.

Projects

:project Kitchen makes a project called Kitchen, in the area you're on. A project's page shows its progress, its deadline and its area, then its todos, grouped under its headings, and its notes folded to one line.

• Headings split a project's todos into parts. Drag a todo onto a heading to move it under it, and drag headings to reorder them.
• ⌘⇧N on a project's page swaps what's open: the notes, or the todos.
• :finish marks the project you're on as done. It leaves Home and goes to the Logbook.

A project with no area is listed under No area.

Todos in projects

On Home, a project's page and the six lists below:

n makes a new todo on Home, on an area's or a project's page, and in the Inbox, Today, Anytime and Someday. A new todo is written as a row where it will sit. ⏎ makes it and leaves an empty row for the next one; esc, or leaving the row empty, stops. A todo made on Today is for today; one made on Anytime or Someday is marked that way; one made in the Inbox is in no project and has no date.

Double-click a todo to open it in place, and esc to close it. Done is struck through; cancelled has a wavy strike.

The lists

Six lists gather todos from every project and area. Each has a command.

⌘1 opens Today, the first row of the sidebar.

Home

Once you have areas or projects, Home (gh) is theirs: today's date, the todos for today with This Evening under them, then every area with its projects, and No area last. Before then, Home is the capture box and the list, as it always was.

The sidebar

In :settings, Areas and projects in the sidebar (on by default) lists each area with its projects under it, above the folders and tags. Starting Pro adds them; it takes nothing away. Show projects as marks each project with its progress ring or its icon.

Right-click an area or project to rename it or change its icon too. ⌘K finds areas, projects and todos along with everything else.

Notes in projects

A note can be filed in one project or one area. Its file stays in whatever folder it's in.

The note's menu does the same under Add to project or area, where typing a name no project has makes one. Filing a note in a project takes it out of any area, and the other way round.

Moving todos out of a note

Todos often start as a checklist in a note, such as meeting notes. ⇧⌘M moves a note's todos into a project, or under one of its headings. Each todo becomes a todo of its own in the project, and the note keeps one line in their place, drawn as a card that links to them:

> [!todos] 4 action items → [[projects/01J…|Kitchen › Plan]] ^td-7k2q

Undo puts the note and the project back as they were. Bringing the todos back returns the ones still open to the note, as checklist lines.

On the :todos page, p makes the todo under the caret a todo of its own, in a project or area you pick. The line stays in its note, its text now a link to the new todo.

Every todo: :todos

:todos lists every checklist todo in your notes, grouped by when it's due: Overdue · Today · Upcoming · No date, and inside each group, by note. The date is the first @date on the todo's line, such as @2026-10-01.

- [ ] book the tiler @2026-10-01
- [ ] choose a worktop

A todo you tick stays where it is until you leave the page. Changes are written a moment after the last one, in one save per note.

Task markers

Every vault has [ ] open and [x] done. The other five markers, [-] cancelled, [>] moved, [<] scheduled, [/] in progress and [!] priority, come with Pro. See Todos for all seven states and the keys that set them.

Without Pro, a line with one of those five markers is plain text: it isn't listed as a todo, and Paperkites never rewrites it.

On disk

Areas, projects and todos are markdown files, one each, kept in three folders in your vault:

~/notes/
  areas/
    01J8Z3K4QW7T9V2N5M6B1C0D8E.md
  projects/
    01J8Z4A2C9R8X0H3T6Y5W1M7PB.md
  todos/
    01J8Z5D0F4G7J2K9M3N6P8Q1RS.md

Each file is named after its id. What it is, and where it belongs, is in its front matter. The body is free text, for the area's description, the project's notes or the todo's notes.

---
id: 01J8Z4A2C9R8X0H3T6Y5W1M7PB
kind: project
title: Kitchen
area: 01J8Z3K4QW7T9V2N5M6B1C0D8E
deadline: 2026-12-01
headings: [Plan, Build]
status: active
---

---
id: 01J8Z5D0F4G7J2K9M3N6P8Q1RS
kind: todo
title: Order the tiles
project: 01J8Z4A2C9R8X0H3T6Y5W1M7PB
heading: Plan
status: open
when: today
---

A todo is in a project or an area, never both. Moving one is a change to one line, and its file stays where it is.

When you tick a todo that repeats, the next one is made for you. A repeat or a reminder needs the todo to be in a project or an area. A reminder is a notification at that time, on every Mac where Paperkites is open.

A note filed in a project or area gets a project: or area: line in its own front matter, with the id.

These files are kept out of your notes: they don't show in the notes list, in search (/) or in the graph. A value Paperkites can't read is ignored rather than the file refused, and keys it doesn't know are left as you wrote them.

Without Pro

If your trial ends, areas, projects and their pages still open and read, and nothing in them is lost. You can't make or change them until you buy Pro. The files are plain markdown either way, and checklists in notes keep working. See Pro and your account.