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Front matter fields you will often see: status, date, owner

Bobby Huang ·

The front matter fields you will often see in agent-written Markdown are status, date, updated, owner, title, tags and source. Field names are not a standard. Each team, template, and tool picks its own. So treat the common meanings as patterns, not rules. When an agent hands you a file, a 30-second pass over the header catches most problems. Check that the block is valid, that the status fits the content, that the dates use one format in a sane order, that the owner is a real person, and that the source says what the body claims.

Key takeaways

  • Front matter field names are conventions, not a standard. Check what your team means by each one.
  • status, date, updated, and owner are the fields most worth checking by hand.
  • Keep values consistent. One date format, one spelling per name, lists for multiple values.
  • A source field is your fastest route to checking an agent's claims.

Open a Markdown file that an agent wrote and the first thing you may see is a block of YAML between two lines of three dashes. That block is front matter. It holds facts about the file, not the file's content. If you are new to the idea, start with our short explainer, What is front matter? For how the whole block works, see the YAML front matter guide.

This guide covers the fields you will often see in that block, what they tend to mean, and what to check when you read them. Field names are not a standard. Each team, template, and tool picks its own. So treat the meanings below as common patterns, not rules.

Here is a neutral example we will use throughout:

---
title: Q3 vendor review
status: draft
date: 2026-01-15
updated: 2026-01-18
owner: Jane Doe
reviewer: John Doe
tags: [vendors, review]
source: notes/doe-holdings-call.md
---

status

status says where the document is in its life. Common values are draft, in-review, approved, done, and archived. Some teams use todo and blocked instead.

What to check:

  • Is the value one your team agreed on? Draft, draft, and DRAFT look the same to a person but not to a script that filters on them.
  • Does it match the content? A file marked done with an empty section is worth a second look.
  • Who may change it? If an agent can set approved on its own work, that is a process question, not a YAML one.

date

date usually means when the document was created or when the event it describes happened. Read the rest of the file to tell which.

The safest format is YYYY-MM-DD, as in 2026-01-15. YAML parsers often read that form as a real date. Other forms, like 01/15/2026 or Jan 15, may be read as plain text, and some tools will then sort them wrong. Our guide Quoting strings, dates and lists in YAML front matter covers when to add quotes.

What to check:

  • One format across files. Mixed formats break sorting.
  • Time zones. A value like 2026-01-15T09:00:00 with no offset means different moments in different places.
  • Plausible values. A date far in the future, or one before the project started, is often a typo.

updated (or modified, last_updated)

Many files carry a second date for the last change. The name varies: updated, modified, last_updated, lastmod.

What to check:

  • It should not be earlier than date.
  • It should move when the file changes. If the body changed and this field did not, the field is stale. It may be set once and never touched again.

owner (or author, assignee)

owner names the person or team responsible for the document. You may also see author for who wrote it and assignee for who acts on it next. These are different jobs, and a file can carry all three.

owner: Jane Doe
author: agent
assignee: John Doe

What to check:

  • A real, current person or team. Names drift when people change roles.
  • Consistent spelling. Jane Doe, jane.doe, and jdoe will not group together in a search.
  • Lists when there is more than one. Use [Jane Doe, John Doe] rather than one string with a comma, so tools can read each name.

title

title is the human name of the document. It often matches the first heading in the body, but not always. When they differ, decide which one is right and fix the other.

tags (or categories, labels)

tags group files by topic. They are usually a list:

tags: [vendors, review]

or the longer form:

tags:
  - vendors
  - review

What to check: a single string like tags: vendors, review is one tag with a comma in it, not two tags.

source (or sources, links, related)

Agents and templates often record where the content came from: another file, a meeting note, or a ticket ID. This field is the fastest way to check a claim in the body.

What to check:

  • Does the path or link still resolve?
  • Is it relative or absolute? A relative path like notes/doe-holdings-call.md only works from the right folder.

id, version, and other machine fields

You may also see id, uuid, version, slug, or template. These are mostly for scripts and sites, not readers. Leave them alone unless you know what reads them. Changing an id can break links elsewhere.

A short reading routine

When an agent hands you a file, a 30-second pass over the header catches most problems:

  1. Is the block valid? Three dashes on the first line, three dashes to close, and nothing else before it.
  2. Status. Is it a value your team uses, and does it fit the content?
  3. Dates. One format, a sane order, and an updated value that moved.
  4. Owner. A real person, spelled the usual way.
  5. Source. Follow one link and confirm it says what the body claims.

If the header shows up as plain text at the top of the page, the block is likely malformed. Our how-to on common YAML front matter errors walks through the usual causes.

Reading the header without reading raw YAML

Raw YAML is easy to skim when it has five fields. It gets harder at fifteen, with nested values and lists. A key/value table is easier to scan.

Skimmark, the Markdown reader and editor we are building for people whose agents write Markdown, has a Frontmatter Table planned for v1: the YAML header shown as key/value rows instead of raw text. Skimmark is in development and not yet released.

To see what Skimmark is and follow along, visit skimmark.com.

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