Metadata and comments

Metadata

@metadata
title = Project Log
author = Subbu
date = 2026-08-06
tags = parser, format
@endmetadata

One key = value per line. Keys are case-insensitive and trimmed. A document may contain at most one metadata block; a second is a warning.

Readers surface it as document properties rather than rendering it inline, so it never appears in the body. xtxt export html uses title for the page title, falling back to the first heading.

It is returned by xtxt extract under metadata.

note

Title: Not frontmatter There is no special syntax at the top of the file. Metadata is an ordinary directive that happens to be conventionally placed first, which means it follows the same rules as everything else and needs no separate parser.

Comments

@comment
Reminder: check these numbers against the Q3 export before publishing.
@endcomment

Never rendered, in any output format. The payload is taken literally, so it can contain anything.

In VS Code, the block-comment shortcut wraps a selection in @comment.

Escaping

A backslash makes the next character literal:

\*not emphasis\*
\[not a link\](x)

Escaping is only needed where a mark would otherwise be read as syntax. Inside @code, @math, @mermaid, @raw and @comment, nothing is interpreted and no escaping is required.

Horizontal rule

@hr