Your first Matter

A Matter is anything worth keeping an eye on. In five minutes you’ll have one on the board, with two Actions moving it forward.

Create the Matter

  1. Open the command palette with ⌘ P (or Ctrl P) and run Matters that Matter: New Matter.
  2. Give it a short, human name, such as Kitchen renovation.
  3. Add an outcome if you like, and how often you want to look at it again. Select Create Matter.

The Matter appears as a new lane on the board. Matters are told apart by icon and name, never by colour: choose its icon from the Matter’s overview.

TipWrite an outcome

Add an outcome line (“A working kitchen before the winter holidays.”) so you know when the Matter can close.

Add an Action

Every Action is a note in MTM/Actions. Its type, status and Matter live in properties that start with mtm-, so you can also edit them by hand:

---
mtm-kind: action
mtm-type: call
mtm-status: next
mtm-matter: "[[Kitchen renovation]]"
mtm-due: 2026-10-09T10:00
mtm-priority: 1
---

The quickest way is quick add: type Confirm the worktop measurements /call #Kitchen today 10am !1 and press Enter.

Confirm the worktop measurements
Today 10:00
Visit the tile showroom
Wed 7 Oct

The two Actions on the board, in the Next column of Kitchen renovation.

Action types

Six types come with the plugin. Each has one pastel, used everywhere the Action appears. See Types and statuses.

WarningEdit the mtm- properties

Edit the mtm- properties, not unprefixed ones such as status: the plugin ignores those.