🧰 Getting Started

Welcome to Chronicler — your digital scriptorium for worldbuilding, notes, and knowledge management.

Chronicler stores your notes as plain Markdown (.md) files in a folder on your computer (called a **vault**).

💡 To see these features in a real-world context, check out the annotated example page!

📁 Vaults and Files🔗

Your vault is just a folder on your computer. You decide where the world is stored, e.g C:\Users\Michael\MyWorld.

• ✅ Chronicler will index and render any Markdown file within the vault
• 🔁 Changes in your file system (rename, move, delete) are instantly detected
• 📂 You can create folders, drag-and-drop files, and organize content however you like

➕ Creating Pages and Folders🔗

• Click the + New Page button in the bottom left sidebar, or right-click on any folder in the file explorer to create a new page or folder.
• New pages start with a default YAML frontmatter block (see below)

📝 Writing in Markdown🔗

Chronicler uses Markdown to format your pages.

• Use # heading, ## subheading, **bold**, *italic*, - for bullet lists, and so on
• Use --- to insert horizontal separators to divide long pages into readable sections.

🔗 Linking Between Pages🔗

Use [[Page Name]] to link to other pages in your vault.

• Autocompletion helps you insert links quickly
• You can alias links with [[Silverflow River|Silverflow]]
• Backlinks are shown in the right sidebar so you can see what links *to* the current page
• When you rename a page, all links to it are automatically updated

🔖 YAML Frontmatter🔗

Each page can start with an optional YAML frontmatter block to store metadata. This is used to generate the wiki-like "infobox" that acts as the page summary card. It's also used to add tags to your page (see below).

All frontmatter fields are optional. There are five fields that have special behaviour:

You can add any custom fields you want (e.g height, age, capital, population etc.). Any field that is not one of the five special fields above will be automatically added as a row in the infobox, giving you a flexible way to display structured data.

Special syntax inside frontmatter values🔗

Some values may contain special characters that need to be treated properly (for example [[wikilinks]] or ||spoilers||). There are two safe ways to include these without breaking the frontmatter:

1. Wrap the value in quotes:
   motto: 'Strength | Honor' race: '[[Elf|High Elf]]'
2. Use a YAML block scalar (the pipe |) for multi-line or literal values:
   notes: | This value can contain literal pipes without escaping: A | B | C It can also contain wikilinks like [[Example Page]] or spoilers like ||secret||.

🏷️ Tags🔗

You can tag pages using the tags: field in YAML frontmatter:

• Click on any tag to see a list of all pages with that tag

🖼️ Infoboxes and Images🔗

You can display an image in a page’s infobox by adding the image field to the frontmatter:

There are three supported ways to specify the image path:

• ✅ Relative to the images/ folder (recommended)
  • image: rivertown.jpg → loads vault/images/rivertown.jpg
  • image: maps/northlands.png → loads vault/images/maps/northlands.png
  • This method assumes you have created an images folder directly inside the vault root.
• 🗂️ Relative to the vault root using ../
  • image: ../factions/champions/banner.jpg → loads vault/factions/champions/banner.jpg
  • Use this if you want to store images next to your Markdown files instead of inside images/.
• ⚠️ Absolute paths (not recommended)
  • image: C:/Users/Michael/Pictures/map.png
  • This only works on your current machine and may break if you move the vault.

Supported formats: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .webp, .gif, .svg

✨ Images in the Page Body🔗

You can also embed images directly within the main text of your page using standard HTML <img> tags. This gives you full control over styling like size, positioning, and text wrapping.

The path rules are the same as for infobox images. It's recommended to place your images in an images folder in your vault root and refer to them by filename.

Basic Image

To add an image, simply use the <img> tag:

Inline Image (e.g., Flags or Icons)

You can also place small images directly into a line of text. This is perfect for icons or flags. The height: 1em; style makes the image scale with the text, and vertical-align: middle; centers it nicely.

Styled Image (Float Right)

You can add inline CSS styles to control the appearance. This example floats the image to the right of the text, adds some space around it, and sets its width.

The text on your page will wrap around the image. This is a great way to illustrate points without breaking the flow of the text.

Image with a Caption

For a more structured image with a caption, wrap the <img> tag in <figure> and <figcaption> tags. This is great for creating a clean, professional look.

Simple Images

In addition to HTML <img> tags, Chronicler supports two simpler image syntaxes. These are easier to type but do not support the advanced styling (size, float, captions etc.) available with HTML.

Markdown image

Wikilink image

🫣 Spoilers🔗

You can use the spoiler syntax by wrapping text in double pipes ||like this||.

Example:

This will render as:

The king’s advisor is secretly a vampire

Readers can click to reveal the hidden text, and click again to hide it.

🗄️ Tables🔗

You can create tables using a combination of pipes (|) and hyphens (-). The first line contains the column headers, and the second line uses hyphens to separate the header from the rest of the table.

Basic Table

To create a basic table, use the following syntax:

Aligning Content

You can control the alignment of content within columns by adding colons (:) to the header separator line.

• A colon on the left side of the hyphens makes the content left-aligned (this is the default).
• A colon on the right side makes the content right-aligned.
• A colon on both sides makes the content centered.

Example:

You can also use standard HTML <table> tags to create more complex tables with greater styling control.

📥 Importing Word Docs🔗

You can import .docx files from Microsoft Word directly into your vault.

• Go to Settings → Import from .docx and choose your files.
• Formatting (headings, bold, italics, links) is preserved.
• Requires Pandoc (Chronicler can download it for you automatically).

💡 Tips🔗

• Use folders to group related pages (e.g. places/, people/, factions/)
• Pages and folders are ordered alphabetically. If you want to enforce ordering, you can number them (e.g 1_people/, 2_places/)
• Use tags *and* folders — you can access pages in multiple ways

❓ Need Help?🔗

• Join the Discord community!
• GitHub Issues for bugs or feature requests.

Happy chronicling! ✍️ - Michael