Document formats

A document in Tatara does not have to be prose. Give it a format and it becomes a board you drag cards across, a checklist with due dates, a grid of typed columns, a live index of your other documents, or a map of branching ideas. The format is a view over the document, not a different kind of thing. The document is still a document: it still lives in a folder, still carries tags and a description, still turns up in search, and your agents still read it as context.

The six formats

Format	Pick this when
Kanban	Work moves through stages and you want to drag it between them.
Tracker	You have a task list where due dates, priorities, and progress matter.
Table	The document is rows and columns of your own data.
Base	You want a live view over the other documents in your brain, not data stored in this one.
Dashboard	You want a composed homepage — live counts, lists, charts, and links over your brain.
Mind map	The document is a branching structure and you want to see and reshape it.

A document with no format is ordinary prose and opens in the normal editor.

Creating one

In the app. In the sidebar, open the ⋮ menu on the Documents header or on any folder — or right-click either — and choose New document. The submenu offers:

Choice	Creates
`Document`	An ordinary prose document.
`Kanban board`	An empty board.
`Tracker`	An empty checklist.
`Table`	An empty grid.
`Mindmap`	A map with your title at the centre.

Type a name, press Enter, and the document opens in that view ready to fill in. The + button on the Documents header and ⌘N still create a plain document in one click. Ask your agent. “Make me a kanban board of the launch tasks”, “a table of our suppliers”, “a view of every competitor profile we have” — and it creates the document, in the right shape, filled in. Agents can create all six formats, including the two the menu does not offer: bases and dashboards are built from a question about your brain rather than drawn by hand, so they are far quicker to describe than to assemble. A document keeps its format through later edits, moves, and renames.

Working with a formatted document

Open one and you get the view, not a text editor. Everything in it is editable — drag a card, tick a task, type in a cell, rename a column — and your changes save as you make them, the same way typing in a normal document does. Three things work differently from an ordinary document:

No properties rail. Owner, type, description, tags, and links are not shown on the page.
No title editing on the page. The title is displayed but read-only. Rename from the sidebar.
No width control. The Prose / Wide / Full setting is not offered.

HTML documents are a different thing entirely — a finished, self-contained page rather than a view over a document. See HTML documents.

If a document will not render

Occasionally a document cannot be shown in its format — usually because an edit broke the structure the view depends on. The app falls back to a plain text editor and tells you in a banner:

This document is meant to render as kanban — showing plain markdown instead. (invalid config)

Nothing is lost. The document is intact and you can still read and repair it, or ask your agent to put it right. Once it is valid again the view comes back on its own.

Kanban boards

Columns and cards, dragged between stages.

Task trackers

Checklists with due dates, priorities, and tags.

Data tables

Typed columns, with formulas.

Base views

Live views over the documents in your brain.

Dashboards

A composed homepage of live blocks over your brain.

Mind maps

Branching topics, laid out and reshaped on a map.

Getting started

Using Tatara