Writing.

The capture box

The box at the top of the home screen is for one-to-few-line thoughts. The app opens on it.

• ⏎ never saves. Line breaks in a short thought are normal.
• ⌘↩ keeps it as a fragment. The box clears, the fragment lands on top of the list, and the caret stays in the box for the next one.
• ⌘E opens it as a full note, with nothing lost. If the first line reads like a title, it becomes the title. Otherwise the title starts empty, with the caret in it.
• Esc never discards. It leaves the box for the list, and i goes back with the draft intact. The draft also survives a reload and a quit.
• Tags render live as you type, such as #k8s/dra. There's no tag field and no chips.
• The end of the box depends on your theme: a "⌘↩ save" hint while you write, a ⌘↩ keycap, or a Save button. The button shows only once there's something other than spaces to save.

Fragments and notes

There are two kinds of thing in Paperkites.

:new makes a new note, with an optional title: :new Reading list. :daily opens today's note, titled with today's date (YYYY-MM-DD), and makes it if it doesn't exist yet.

The editor

Notes are markdown, shown as live preview. The editor speaks vim.

• Moving around (NORMAL, and VISUAL for selecting): the whole note stays rendered, so you can move, select and yank freely.
• Writing (INSERT, after i): the block you're writing in shows its markdown on a faint tint, without moving anything. Press esc and it's rendered again.
• Vim is optional. Turn it off in :settings or with :vim off, and the editor is always writing. See Settings.
• Saving is automatic. There's no save key.
• Renaming a note renames its file. Change the title and the file on disk follows.

The gutter

Beside a note, the gutter shows when it was created, its tags (full paths, wrapping after a /), and how many links go out of it and come into it (2 out / 5 in). :info shows the note's words, reading time, file and links.

Backlinks

At the foot of a note, Linked from lists each note that links to it, with the sentence the link sits in, not just a title.

Tags

A tag is a word with a # in front, written anywhere in the text. There's no tag field and no tag manager: a tag exists because a note uses it.

Tags complete as you type. With the caret on a tag, gt opens its page. See Finding things for tag pages and renaming a tag everywhere.

Links

A link is another note's title in double brackets.

Links complete as you type [[. You can also select text and press ⌘K to make it a link.

Moving around

With the caret on a link, tag or person, in NORMAL:

The format bar

Select text and a small bar offers bold, italic, link, tag, mention and code. The same works from the keyboard:

You can turn the bar off in :settings, under Writing. The keys stay.

Images

Write an image the markdown way, with a path inside your vault:

![the view from the ridge](Pics/photo.png)

The image shows below its line. Images are served from your vault and nothing outside it. In lists, a note's preview shows up to two of its images.

Tidying: :format

:format tidies the markdown of the note you're in: tables, lists and blank lines. It never touches your words.

Mentions

@ followed by a username mentions a person, and completes as you type. See People.

Dates

Type one of these and it turns into an ISO date (2026-09-24):

Deleting

:delete moves the note you're in to the trash. :trash shows the trash, and ⏎ on a note puts it back where it lived. See Your files.