The outliner is where you write. It's the only writing surface in Thoute — every note, task, link, attachment, and idea lives as a bullet in one running outline.
If you've used Workflowy or Roam, it'll feel familiar. If you haven't, the rules below are the whole model.
Every line is a block. Each block has its own identity, so it can be tagged, referenced, moved, or zoomed into without losing its place in the outline.
Keep bullets short. For longer thinking, indent children underneath. The outline does the structuring — you just keep adding bullets.
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| Enter | New sibling bullet below the current one |
| Tab | Indent — make this bullet a child of the one above |
| Shift+Tab | Outdent — promote one level up |
That's the writing model. Everything else is a shortcut on top of those three.
Click any bullet's handle (or press Cmd+.) to zoom in. That bullet becomes the new top of the page, and you only see it and its descendants.
Zoom is the answer to "this outline is too big and I just want to think about this one thing." Zoom in, work, zoom out.
The Filter this page box at the top of every outline narrows what you see to bullets that match. Children of a match stay visible so context isn't lost.
Type a few characters and the outline shrinks live. Clear the box to restore.
Type a slash command at the start of an empty bullet, followed by space, to change its type:
/task — a tracked task with status, due date, and priority/event — something that happened or is scheduled/note — the default plain bullet/draw — a freeform drawing canvasDifferent types render differently and show up in their own filtered views in the Library and Tasks lenses.
Start a bullet with # , ## , or ### to render it as a heading. Headings are still bullets — they can have children, be moved around, and be referenced like anything else.
Type two open-parens (( and a fuzzy-search picker opens over every bullet in your vault. Pick one and you've embedded a live reference. Click it later to jump straight to the target.
References are bidirectional: every referenced bullet shows a backlink below it pointing back to the bullets that mention it.
The picker also has a Create new node… action — useful when the thing you want to link to doesn't exist yet.
Type # followed by a word — #idea, #followup, #book. Tags are inline and searchable. Click any tag to filter the vault to bullets carrying it.
Tags are word-boundary anchored, so a heading like # Friday is still a heading, not a #Friday tag.
**bold** or Cmd+B*italic* or Cmd+I`code`A /task bullet shows a checkbox. Cmd+Enter toggles it done. Tasks have status, due dates, and priorities — see Tasks for the full model.
Cmd+Shift+E exports the current subtree as Markdown, OPML, plain text, or formatted HTML. Useful for sharing a branch, archiving, or piping into another tool.
See Keyboard shortcuts and syntax for everything in one place.