A note is an element of a Tinderbox file and might be thought of as the 'atomic' entity of information within a Tinderbox file. However, a note is really the sum of its attributes. Most obvious of these are the title ($Name) and text ($Text) of the note, but in fact the state of virtually every aspect of a note is stored in an attribute.
Every note (and agent, etc.) possesses every attribute defined in the document, much as a spreadsheet row possesses every column, or a pre-printed index card has a labelled box for each possible discrete input—regardless of whether the attribute/spreadsheet cell/index box is actually used. Indeed a note may be considered as a set of attributes, the majority of which can be viewed, and most edited.
In initial use, the note's title and text are the most obvious (attribute-based) affordances you will alter but deeper use will introduce the user to all manner of attributes both system and user types.
Notes are the basic units of writing and information in Tinderbox document. There is no fixed limit to the number of notes a Tinderbox document can handle; it can easily manage thousands, even tens of thousands of notes. At some point performance will become a limiting factor, but use of agents and rules is a bigger factor in performance than the sheer number of notes.
A note may also act as a prototype for other notes.
A note is edited via the text pane, which fills the right side of the default window layout when a note is selected in the (left-side) view pane. The text pane thus displays information about the currently selected note.
Many other aspects of Tinderbox such as agents, separators and adornments are effectively just specialised forms of the basic note object.
Notes are often referenced via, or their location is described by, their Path within the canonical data outline used to store the document. That is also the outline used in Outline view.
Any note containing other notes is also regarded as a 'container'; put another way, a container is any note that has children.
Agents are a special class of container, as they create/control the aliases within themselves. agents may not contain other notes, with the exception of adding adornments in map view