title: Supported Zettel Roles
role: manual
tags: #manual #meta #reference #zettel #zettelstore
syntax: zmk
back: 00001006020000 00001012051600 00001012051800
backward: 00001006020000 00001012051600 00001012051800
box-number: 1
copyright: (c) 2020-present by Detlef Stern <ds@zettelstore.de>
created: 20210126175322
forward: 00000000000100 00001004020000
lang: en
license: EUPL-1.2-or-later
modified: 20250102175032
published: 20250102175032
visibility: public

The [`role` key](00001006020000#role) defines what kind of zettel you are writing.
You are free to define your own roles.
It is allowed to set an empty value or to omit the role.

Some roles are defined for technical reasons:



If you adhere to the process outlined by Niklas Luhmann, a zettel could have one of the following three roles:



However, you are free to define additional roles, e.g. `material` for literature that is web-based only, `slide` for presentation slides, `paper` for the text of a scientific paper, `project` to define a project, ...