The 36 Category Pages

The 36 category pages that ship with the Celestial Vault — Books, Movies, People, Companies, and the rest.

The Celestial Vault ships with 36 category pages at the vault root — one for each of the most common kinds of things you'd want to keep notes about. They're not sample data; they're empty starting points, waiting for your notes to fill them.

The List

Here are all 36, by rough cluster:

People & Companies

People.md
Companies.md
Meetings.md
Events.md
Places.md
Trips.md

Reading & Watching

Books.md
Albums.md
Songs.md
Movies.md
Shows.md
Podcasts.md
Podcast episodes.md
Games.md
Board games.md

Knowledge & Thinking

Notes.md
Ideas (inferred — varies by version)
Topics.md
Categories.md (the meta-page that lists every other category)
Resources.md
Documentations.md
References.md (the other-people-wrote-it equivalent of Notes)
Clippings.md (web-clipper destination)
Posts.md
Evergreen.md

Self & Practice

Reflections.md
Contemplations.md
Meditations.md
Visions.md
Dreamlines.md (the planning framework — see Dreamlines)
Drawings.md
Recipes.md
Trackers.md

Projects & Outputs

Projects.md
Plans.md
Products.md
Captures.md

Specialty

Locked.md (the password-gated category)

What Each Page Contains

A typical category page has three parts:

1. Frontmatter

---
categories:
  - "*Categories*"
---

Every category page is itself categorized under *Categories* — meaning the Categories.md page lists every other category page automatically. (Yes, it's recursive. The categories page has a base view of all categories, including itself.)

2. A Brief Description

A few sentences explaining what kinds of notes belong here. You can rewrite this freely — it's just a starter.

3. The Embedded Base

A live database table showing every note in your vault tagged with this category. Sortable, filterable, clickable.

They Ship Empty

The category pages don't come with sample notes.

You won't see "Atomic Habits" already in Books.md. You won't find Sasha in People.md. The vault ships clean — every category page exists, every base is configured, but the content is yours to add.

This is intentional. Sample data would feel like clutter from day one. An empty Books page that fills as you read your first three books is yours.

Some Suggestions For Each Cluster

A starter idea per cluster, to help imagine how you'd actually use these:

Cluster	First three notes you might add
Reading & Watching	A book you're currently reading, an album you've been on lately, a movie you want to see
People & Companies	Three people you've talked to in the last week
Knowledge & Thinking	A key idea from a conversation, a question you're holding, a hypothesis you want to test
Projects & Outputs	The single largest project you have right now
Self & Practice	A reflection on the past week, an intention for the next one

Adding Notes To A Category

The two patterns:

1. Use a template

Run Cmd/Ctrl + P → "Templater: insert template" → pick Book Template.md (or Person Template.md, etc.). The template creates a new note with the right frontmatter pre-filled, including categories: *Books*.

The new note immediately appears in Books.md's base view.

2. Manually add to frontmatter

Create any note. Add categories: with the right wikilink:

---
categories:
  - "*Books*"
---

Same effect.

(See Wikilink Categories for the full how-to.)

Deleting A Category Page

If a category doesn't fit your life — say you don't track Recipes — just delete Recipes.md and Recipes.base. The vault works exactly the same.

Don't be afraid to delete.

The 36 are a starting set, not a forced taxonomy. Some Celestial users delete half of them in their first week and add their own. There's no penalty.

Wikilink Categories — how to actually use these pages
Bases & Database Views — how the database tables work
The Self-Organizing Vault — the philosophy behind keeping it loose