| name | mif-frontmatter |
| description | Author MIF (Modeled Information Format) Level 1-3 frontmatter for any document, climbing from the L1 floor to L2/L3 only when the drafting context supplies real detail. Use whenever a doc needs MIF-conformant YAML frontmatter that projects losslessly to the canonical JSON-LD. |
| argument-hint | <path to the document> [--level 1|2|3] |
mif-frontmatter
Shared substrate for every genre skill in this suite. It governs the YAML
frontmatter that makes a document a MIF unit: a block that projects to the
canonical JSON-LD and validates fail-closed against
https://mif-spec.dev/schema/.
The "one artifact, two readers" contract
A MIF doc exists in two interconvertible forms — human-readable markdown
(frontmatter + body) and machine-readable JSON-LD (the schema-checked
canonical object). Authoring is bidirectional and the round-trip is lossless;
see the mif-validate skill for the tooling.
Whenever a level, floor, or the type field itself comes up — deciding
what level a document can claim, explaining the L1 floor, or drafting
frontmatter — state the type enum explicitly (see the L1 row below). It's a
hard constraint on an L1 field, not an implementation detail to leave
implicit, so surface it every time L1 is discussed, not only when actually
writing the YAML. For what distinguishes the three values and how to choose
one before drafting, see
Documentation Taxonomy —
the canonical source for this enum; don't restate its definitions here.
Level floors (attempt the highest the context supports)
| Level | Frontmatter fields | Emit when |
|---|
| L1 (hard floor) | id, type (enum: semantic | episodic | procedural), created (+ body becomes content) | Always. Below L1 is a skill error. |
| L2 | namespace, modified, temporal | review cadence / topic namespace known |
| L3 | provenance, citations[], relationships[] | doc sourced from real, attributable input |
Field projection (markdown frontmatter -> JSON-LD)
id -> @id (auto-prefixed urn:mif: if not already a URN)type -> conceptType; MUST be one of semantic, episodic, procedural
(see Documentation Taxonomy
for what each means and how to pick one). @type is always Concept. The
document genre (adr, tutorial, runbook…) lives in namespace/tags,
not in type.created -> created (ISO-8601 date-time)- body ->
content
- every other field passes through verbatim (it must be a valid MIF property or
an open extension key).
Grade-down rule (never fabricate)
Attempt the highest level the drafting context supports, field by field. If a
level's required field cannot be populated from real input (no citations -> no
L3; no review cadence -> omit temporal), drop to the next lower level rather
than writing a placeholder. Never emit an empty or unresolved-placeholder MIF
field. This helper proposes frontmatter; mif-validate disposes.
Minimal L1 example
---
id: 7b3c1e90-5a2f-4c8d-9e10-2f6a4b8c1d3e
type: semantic
created: 2026-06-29T10:30:00Z
---
