Frontmatter

Frontmatter is metadata at the start of a Markdown document. mdedit.ai preserves YAML and TOML frontmatter and exposes a visual editor for common fields.

YAML

---
title: Release notes
description: Changes in this version
tags:
  - product
  - docs
draft: false
---

TOML

+++
title = "Release notes"
draft = false
tags = ["product", "docs"]
+++

Keep the opening and closing delimiters at the start of the file. Invalid YAML or TOML remains visible as source, but metadata-driven features cannot use it until the syntax is fixed. Use the YAML specification (opens in a new tab) or TOML documentation (opens in a new tab) for the full syntax.

mdedit.ai render settings

The mdedit YAML object configures product-specific rendering. For example, a resume document can select a render profile, theme, page size, margin, and optional CSS:

---
mdedit:
  renderProfile: resume
  direction: auto
  styles:
    theme: classic
    cssInline: |
      #resume-preview h2 { letter-spacing: 0.04em; }
  page:
    size: letter
    margin: 0.5in
---

mdedit.direction controls the document's writing direction:

• auto resolves each prose block from its first strong character, so English, Arabic, Hebrew, and other scripts can coexist naturally in the same document.
• ltr makes prose consistently left to right.
• rtl makes prose consistently right to left.

Fenced and inline code remain left to right in every mode. In the web app, choose More → Frontmatter → Writing direction to change this setting without editing YAML directly. The editor, preview, styled HTML/HTML ZIP, frontend and backend PDF, DOCX, ODT, and EPUB exports use the same setting. Markdown and Markdown ZIP exports preserve the original frontmatter unchanged.

DOCX, ODT, and EPUB apply direction per prose block so mixed-language lists and tables remain readable without reversing code or URLs. PPTX, RTF, and converted markup formats preserve content, but their RTL layout is not guaranteed.

See RTL and bidirectional text for complete examples, extension overrides, and export behavior.

Remote CSS is loaded only when the document explicitly allows it. It can fail offline or because of CORS, so keep essential styles inline. See Markdown resumes for the complete supported workflow.