tolaria/docs/adr/0010-dynamic-wikilink-relationship-detection.md

type, id, title, status, date

type	id	title	status	date
ADR	0010	Dynamic wikilink relationship detection	active	2026-03-08

Context

Laputa needs to support arbitrary relationship types between notes (e.g., Topics:, Key People:, Depends on:). Initially, a hardcoded list RELATIONSHIP_KEYS identified which frontmatter fields were relationships. This was fragile — adding a new relationship type required a code change, and users couldn't define their own.

Decision

The Rust parser dynamically detects relationship fields by scanning all frontmatter keys for values containing [[wikilinks]]. Any field with wikilink values is captured in the relationships HashMap — no hardcoded field name list needed.

Options considered

• Option A (chosen): Dynamic detection via [[wikilink]] presence — zero configuration, extensible, any field name works. Downside: fields with bracket-like content could false-positive (mitigated by the [[...]] double-bracket syntax).
• Option B: Hardcoded RELATIONSHIP_KEYS list — simple, predictable. Downside: inflexible, requires code changes for new relationship types.
• Option C: User-configurable relationship field list in vault config — flexible. Downside: configuration burden, doesn't work out of the box.

Consequences

• Users can define arbitrary relationship types by adding wikilink values to any frontmatter field.
• No code change needed when adding new relationship types — convention over configuration.
• All relationship fields appear in the Inspector's RelationshipsPanel automatically.
• The relationships HashMap in VaultEntry captures all dynamic relationships.
• Standard fields (belongs_to, related_to) are still recognized for backward compatibility but not privileged.
• Re-evaluation trigger: if false-positive detection becomes a problem (e.g., fields with literal [[ content that aren't relationships).