Categories

Categories group related notes together and can be customized with their own fields and views.

Creating a category

From the Categories page, use Create blank to make an empty category (name, description, and color), or pick one of the recommended categories suggested from your onboarding answers — some of these come with a starter Trigger already set up.

Simple vs. formatted notes

Every category has a Display format toggle:

• Off (Simple) — notes are free-text: just a title and Markdown content.
• On (Formatted) — notes are managed through custom form fields you define for the category.

Switching from Simple to Formatted starts managing notes through form fields. Switching back from Formatted to Simple removes the category’s existing form fields and any Table/Kanban view settings that depend on them, so make sure that’s what you want before confirming.

Custom fields

Formatted categories have a Format tab where you add, reorder (drag and drop), and delete fields. Supported field types:

• Text
• Textarea
• Number
• Date
• Radio buttons
• Dropdown
• Checkboxes

Radio, Dropdown, and Checkboxes fields each have their own set of options, and every option needs a unique value.

Setting up a Kanban board

Any active Radio-type field can be designated the category’s Kanban status key. Once set, the category becomes eligible for the Kanban view, with one column per option on that field. Dragging a note card to a different column updates the note’s value for that field.

Category settings

Each category’s detail view has three tabs:

• Info — name, description, color, MCP access level (see below), writing cadence, and a shortcut to the category’s Triggers.
• Wiki — an AI-maintained summary of the category’s notes, which you can edit manually or refresh.
• Format — custom fields, for formatted categories only.

A category can’t be deleted while it still has active or archived notes in it.

Controlling AI access over MCP

Every category also has an MCP access level, set from its Info tab. This controls what an AI tool connected to Jade Note over MCP — such as Claude or ChatGPT — is allowed to do with the notes in that category.

Access level	What a connected AI tool can do
Read/Write	Read, search, create, append, link, and update notes in the category.
Read-only	Read and search notes, but can’t create or change anything.
No access	Nothing — the category is completely hidden from MCP, including its name, notes, snippets, links, and wiki content.

Use No access for anything you never want an external AI tool to see, and Read-only for categories you want available as context but never edited automatically. See Claude Connector for how to connect an MCP client like Claude to Jade Note in the first place.