Privacy, source safety, and troubleshooting

Source safety and persistence

Markdown files remain the source of truth. Deckard changes note content only when you:

• use a task checkbox (which also adds the ✅ date, or [completion:: …] on a Dataview-format line, and the next occurrence of a repeating task);
• extract a tagged heading, or rename a note, tag, or heading;
• carry unfinished tasks forward, or write a review into a periodic note;
• edit a search’s results;
• approve an entity tag from Tag Heading with a Person or Project… in the editor’s Refactor… menu.

Before a task edit or extraction, Deckard checks the source is unchanged since it was indexed. A rename or merge that reaches more than one note is shown before it is written, and Deckard: Undo Last Change takes the last one back.

Local cache: a SQLite file, deckard-search.sqlite, holds note words for search and each note as last read. It is in VS Code’s storage for the workspace, outside your folder, so it is never committed: on macOS under ~/Library/Application Support/Code/User/workspaceStorage/, on Windows under %APPDATA%\Code\User\workspaceStorage\, and on Linux under ~/.config/Code/User/workspaceStorage/, in the folder for this workspace. Deleting it is safe: Deckard reads the notes again on its next start. Deckard: Reindex Workspace rebuilds it without deleting it.

No external services: note content is not sent to an AI model or external service, except a task’s own words when you choose Suggest steps.

What Deckard remembers is stored in VS Code, not in your notes:

• Per workspace: favorite tags and entities, pinned notes, saved searches, Home’s widgets, tag and note view counts, and the custom task order.
• Per workspace, apart from the rest: what each tag’s page held when you last had it open, for Since you last looked, and the Hubs view’s sort. They are not in the copies or an export, and a visit is replaced each time it counts.
• Per machine: sort modes, column counts, layouts, and page sizes.

What names your notes belongs to the folder it describes, so opening another project cannot disturb it. Upgrading from 1.18 or earlier hands what was stored machine-wide to the first workspace you open.

Favorites, pins, and saved searches are never deleted on their own. When their tag or note is gone, Tidy… in Deckard: Manage Favorites, Pins, and Searches… lists them and asks before removing them. Only what Deckard works out for itself, view counts and access order, is cleaned up automatically.

Copies: a moment after each change, Deckard writes a copy of what this workspace remembers into the workspace’s storage, and keeps the last twenty. Restore from a Copy…, in Deckard: Manage Favorites, Pins, and Searches…, offers them newest first and takes one back. Export… there writes a JSON file that Import… reads back. Import and Restore write a copy of what is there before they replace it, so either can be taken back with Restore; a window with no folder open keeps no copies, and says so before it replaces anything.

Limitations and troubleshooting

• A message offers Open Log: the message says what did not happen and what to do; the details are in Deckard’s log.
• Something is not there: run Deckard: Check My Setup. It checks the notes folder, excluded files, unreadable notes, and whether deckard.me matches anyone.
• A note is missing from every search: open Deckard: Open Stats, which lists notes the index could not read, with the reason.
• Opened during first indexing: pages open at once and show progress, such as Indexing this workspace: 412 of 3,760 notes read….
• Home is empty: make sure a workspace is open, its Markdown files are within the configured scope, and they use the Markdown patterns shown above.
• Related Notes shows no results: open a saved Markdown note containing a tag, then check that another saved note uses the same tag.
• A task is missing from the Tasks view: it may be parked. Search is:parked.
• A task or section is missing: confirm the task is an unordered checklist item, the heading is an ATX heading such as ## Heading, and deckard.noteBoundaries is line for a tagged line that is not a heading to be an entry of its own.
• A heading is missing from the Outline: the Outline shows ATX headings only, not underlined Title/=== headings, and excludes headings in fenced code blocks.
• Content in a code block: text in fenced code is found by Find and a search’s words, but tags, tasks, and links inside it are ignored, and it is left out of completion.
• A numeric hash is missing: numeric-only # tokens are not tags. Use an @ marker or include a non-numeric character.
• Date sorting looks unexpected: a note’s created date is its created: or date: front matter, then a daily note’s day, then the file’s creation time; its updated date is its updated: front matter, then the file’s modified time. A fresh clone resets file times, so notes without those front-matter dates all look created and updated on the day of the clone.
• Deckard feels slow: run Deckard: Open Log. Steps of 100 ms or longer are listed as Slow:. For every timing, set the log’s level to Debug in the Output panel. While the search cache is first built, a search finds notes by title and tags before their words.

Deckard does not support ordered-list tasks or arbitrary checklist syntaxes, and it scans only Markdown files within the configured workspace scope.

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