MOC View

Map of Content (MOC) view renders your hierarchy as an interactive collapsible tree with clickable wiki links. Perfect for exploring your knowledge structure at a glance.

MOC Content Hierarchy

Use bullet list structures in your notes as a hierarchy source instead of frontmatter properties.

What is MOC Content Hierarchy?

Traditionally, Nexus Properties reads relationships from frontmatter properties (Parent, Children, Related). MOC Content mode provides an alternative: parse bullet lists with wiki links directly from your note's markdown body.

This is ideal for:

• Existing MOC files: Notes that already organize knowledge via nested bullet lists
• Quick hierarchy authoring: Build hierarchies visually in markdown without editing frontmatter
• Top-down organization: Start with a high-level overview file and nest topics underneath

Example MOC File

# My Hobbies

- [[Reading]]
    - [[Fiction]]
        - [[Mystery Novels]]
        - [[Science Fiction]]
    - [[Non-Fiction]]
        - [[History Books]]
- [[Sports]]
    - [[Running]]
    - [[Swimming]]

When viewing this file with MOC Content mode enabled:

• Children view shows: Reading, Sports
• All Children view shows all 7 descendant notes recursively

Enabling MOC Content Mode

Step 1: Enable MOC Content Reading

Settings → MOC → Enable MOC content reading (default: enabled)

This allows the plugin to detect and parse MOC structures in your notes.

Step 2: Switch Hierarchy Source

Two ways to switch:

1. Quick Toggle Button: When viewing a file with valid MOC content (3+ links, 2+ levels), a button appears next to the view toggle. Click to switch between "Properties" and "MOC Content".

2. Settings: Settings → MOC → Hierarchy Source → Choose "MOC Content"

Valid MOC Detection

The plugin automatically detects valid MOC content when:

• The file contains 3 or more wiki links in bullet lists
• At least one bullet has nested children (2+ levels of indentation)

Files that don't meet these criteria won't show the hierarchy source toggle button.

Supported Bullet Format

- [[Note 1]]
    - [[Child 1]]
- [[Note 2]]
	- [[Child with tab indent]]
    - [[Child with space indent]]

The parser handles both tabs and spaces for indentation. Each bullet line must contain at least one wiki link; the first link becomes the node identity.

Frontmatter Safety

The MOC parser skips frontmatter entirely. Wiki links in your YAML properties are not parsed as hierarchy:

---
parent: "[[Some Parent]]"  # NOT parsed as MOC hierarchy
related: ["[[Related 1]]", "[[Related 2]]"]  # NOT parsed
---

# My Note

- [[Actual Child 1]]  # Parsed as MOC hierarchy
- [[Actual Child 2]]  # Parsed as MOC hierarchy

Bases View Behavior

When MOC Content mode is active:

View	Behavior
Children	Direct children only (level 0 descendants from bullet list)
All Children	All descendants recursively
Parent	Hidden (not applicable)
Related	Hidden (not applicable)
All Parents	Hidden (not applicable)
All Related	Hidden (not applicable)

Graph View Behavior

When MOC Content mode is active:

• Related view: Hidden
• Start from Current File: Hidden
• Only hierarchical views (showing parent-child relationships) are available

Statistics Display

The header statistics adapt to MOC Content mode:

• Only Children and All Children counts are shown
• Parent and Related statistics are hidden

Switching Between Modes

You can freely switch between "Properties" and "MOC Content" modes:

• The plugin remembers your preference per session
• Each mode shows the same file's hierarchy differently
• No data is modified when switching—it's purely a display mode

Limitations

• Read-only: MOC Content mode only reads hierarchies; creating nodes still uses frontmatter properties
• Single file scope: The hierarchy is parsed from the current file only
• First link wins: If a bullet has multiple wiki links, only the first is used as the node identity
• No bidirectional sync: Unlike frontmatter properties, MOC content doesn't trigger bidirectional updates

---

Opening MOC View

The view switcher cycles through three modes: Graph → Bases → MOC

• Toggle button: Click "Switch to MOC" in the view header
• Command: "Toggle View Mode (Graph/Bases/MOC)"

Tree Structure

MOC displays notes in a hierarchical outline format. Note names respect the title property — if a note has a title property set (e.g., title: "[[path|Display Name]]"), MOC view shows the display name instead of the raw filename, consistent with Graph and Bases views.

- [[Current Note]]
    - [[Child 1]]
        - [[Grandchild 1]]
        - [[Grandchild 2]]
    - [[Child 2]]

Each level is indented to show parent-child relationships clearly. Items with children have a collapse/expand chevron.

Search

A persistent search bar appears between the toolbar and the tree. Type a query to filter the tree by node name (case-insensitive substring match).

When an intermediate node doesn't match the query but has matching descendants, the node is removed and its children are re-parented to the nearest visible ancestor. This maintains connections through the tree rather than hiding entire branches.

Full tree:
- [[Project A]]
    - [[Design]]
        - [[UI Mockups]]
        - [[Color Palette]]
    - [[Development]]

Search: "ui" →
- [[UI Mockups]]

In this example, "Project A" and "Design" don't match "ui", but "UI Mockups" does — so it gets promoted to the top level. "Color Palette" and "Development" are removed because they don't match and have no matching descendants.

Search works in all modes: single-tree, folder-forest, and Render Related. Clearing the search restores the full tree.

Root Mode Toggle

Switch between two root modes using the toggle button in the toolbar:

Current (Default)

Tree starts from the active file as root, showing only its descendants.

- [[Active File]] ← root
    - [[Child 1]]
    - [[Child 2]]

Top Parent

Traverses upward to find the topmost ancestor, then renders the full tree with your current file highlighted.

- [[Topmost Ancestor]] ← root (traversed upward)
    - [[Intermediate Parent]]
        - [[Active File]] ← highlighted
            - [[Child 1]]
            - [[Child 2]]

This uses the same traversal algorithm as the Graph view, respecting the Prioritize Parent setting for notes with multiple parents.

Parent Selection

When a note has multiple parents, a dropdown appears in the MOC toolbar. It lets you choose which parent the upward traversal should follow when building the tree from the top parent.

• Default: The parent specified by the Prioritize Parent setting, or the first parent if none is configured.
• Override: Select a different parent from the dropdown. The tree rebuilds immediately with the new root.
• Ephemeral: The override resets whenever you switch to a different file.

The dropdown is hidden when:

• The current file has fewer than 2 parents
• Render Related is enabled
• The hierarchy source is MOC Content
• Viewing a folder note

Render Related

Enable the Render Related checkbox in the toolbar to switch to a purely related-based tree. Instead of showing the children hierarchy, the tree displays only notes linked via the Related frontmatter property, expanded recursively with cycle detection.

- [[Active File]]
    - [[Related Note 1]]
        - [[Related to Related 1]]   ← recursive expansion
    - [[Related Note 2]]

Related nodes are always read from frontmatter properties, regardless of the hierarchy source setting.

Folder Note Forest

When viewing a folder note (a note whose filename matches its parent folder name, e.g., projects/projects.md), the MOC view automatically renders a forest of trees — one tree per file in the folder and its subfolders.

This mirrors the Graph view's folder note behavior: instead of showing a single tree rooted at the current file, the view builds a separate hierarchy tree for every file in the folder, starting each from its topmost parent.

- [[Top Parent A]]
    - [[File 1]]
    - [[File 2]]
- [[Top Parent B]]
    - [[File 3]]
        - [[File 4]]

Files that already appear in another tree are skipped to avoid duplication.

When Render Related is enabled, the forest switches to a purely related-based view: each file's tree shows only its Related frontmatter connections (recursively), with no children hierarchy. This mirrors the Graph view's folder note related mode.

Toolbar differences

• The Root Mode Toggle (Current / Top Parent) is hidden for folder notes, since the forest always builds from top parents.
• Expand All and Collapse All still work across the entire forest.

View switcher behavior

When a folder note is active, the Bases view is removed from the toggle cycle. The view switcher cycles between Graph and MOC only. If you navigate to a folder note while on the Bases view, the view automatically switches to Graph.

Navigation

Click

Click any note to open it in the current pane.

Ctrl+Click (Cmd+Click on Mac)

Open note in a new tab.

Expand/Collapse

• Chevron: Click to toggle individual branches
• Expand All: Show all nested children
• Collapse All: Hide all children

Display Properties

Show frontmatter properties next to each note in the tree. Configure in Settings → MOC → Display properties.

Enter a comma-separated list of property names (e.g., status, priority, tags). Properties containing wiki links are rendered as clickable links.

- [[Project A]]                    [Active] [High]
    - [[Task 1]]                   [Done]
    - [[Task 2]]                   [In Progress]

The properties appear to the right of each note name and scroll horizontally if they overflow.

Visual Indicators

• Current file: Highlighted with accent background color (in Top Parent mode)
• Depth styling: Root items are larger/bolder, deeper items are smaller/muted
• Vertical lines: Connect parent to children visually
• Property badges: Frontmatter values shown as compact badges

Cycle Detection

The view handles circular relationships gracefully. If a note appears in its own ancestry chain, it won't cause infinite loops.

Next Steps

• Graph Views — Visual network exploration
• Bases View — List-based relationship view
• Configuration — Hierarchy source and MOC content settings
• Hotkeys — Toggle View Mode command