Frontmatter

Every page carries a little metadata: its title, its date & the template that wraps it. In Baudelaire that metadata is a Typst binding, not a separate header in another language.

The binding

Frontmatter is a top-level #let frontmatter = (..) export. The build reads that one binding from the page’s evaluated module; everything after it is the body.

#let frontmatter = (
  title: "Hello",
  date: datetime(year: 2026, month: 7, day: 9),
  tags: ("intro",),
)

Because Typst evaluates it, the value is a dict like any other, so it can be computed, e.g. a title derived from a filename, a date from sys.inputs, or fields pulled from a loaded data file.

Recognized keys

title:str

The page title (a string). Used in the <title>, headings, navigation, feeds, and social tags.

date:datetime

A Typst datetime. A page joins its feeds and sorts in a sort="date" collection only when it has one. Write it as datetime(year: 2026, month: 7, day: 9).

draft:bool

Draft pages are skipped unless you pass --drafts (or a profile turns them on).

slug:str

Override the URL slug, otherwise derived from the filename.

template:str

The template that wraps this page, overriding the collection’s default.

order:int

An integer sort key for a sort="order" collection (the guide chapters here use it).

redirect:array<str>

One old path, or a list of them, to forward to this page. See redirects.

Values are typed: a key with the wrong type is a hard error naming the file and field, never a silent drop. title: 3 or tags: "intro" (a bare string where a list is expected) stops the build with an explanation.

Taxonomy keys

Any key you declare under taxonomies in config.kdl is recognized too, and collects a list of terms:

#let frontmatter = (
  title: "On Typst",
  tags: ("typst", "tooling"),
)

With taxonomies { tags } configured, tags groups the page under each term. See taxonomies.

Everything else

Unknown keys are not errors: they pass through as extra frontmatter, yours to read in a template. description, summary, image, and author are common ones the build itself reads when present (for meta and social tags):

#let frontmatter = (
  title: "A post",
  description: "A short summary for search and social cards.",
  image: "cover.png",
)

A template reaches them through the page’s frontmatter dict like any other field.