Give each project a home—and each theme a reusable name.

A dossier is a named research collection. A tag is a compact label that can recur across collections. Pages and annotations can belong to several dossiers and carry several tags, but Redline does not infer those relationships for you.

Dossier or tag?

Use a dossier when you expect to open one workspace and review its pages, annotations, notes, sources, health checks, and exports together. Use a tag when the same classification should remain useful across many dossiers.

Create and link a dossier from the sidebar

The sidebar is the shortest route when the current page already belongs in the new dossier.

1. Open Redline beside the page and choose Dossier.
2. Enter a New dossier name and an optional Description.
3. Choose Create and link page.

This route creates the dossier as pinned and immediately links and saves the current page. The new dossier appears under Your dossiers; choose Open for its Library detail or Unlink to remove only the current page’s membership.

Pinned, unarchived dossiers can appear under the Library Dashboard’s Dossiers in motion. Pinned dossiers are also placed first in the selection context menu’s Capture to dossier… list, which shows at most ten unarchived dossiers.

Create a dossier in the full Library

Use the Library when you want to define the collection before attaching source material.

1. Open Library → Dossiers.
2. Under Create Dossier, enter Name, optional Description, and optional Tags.
3. Choose Create.

A dossier created here starts unpinned and has no page or annotation membership. The Dashboard also offers Start something new → Dossier → Create; that quick route creates an unpinned dossier by name only.

Link pages to one or more dossiers

From the sidebar

1. Open the source and choose the sidebar’s Page tab.
2. Under Linked dossiers, choose an unarchived dossier from Link to a dossier….
3. Choose Link.

Linking saves the page immediately, including an unsaved current page. To remove a membership, choose the dossier pill shown under Linked dossiers; its × action also saves the change immediately. Repeat the process to place the same page in several dossiers.

From a Library page record

Open Library → Pages → the page. In Metadata Editor, select one or more values under Dossiers, then choose Save in the page header.

Assign annotations separately

1. Open Library → Annotations and choose the annotation.
2. In the Annotation panel, select one or more values under Dossiers.
3. Choose Save in the annotation header.

A manual finding created from the sidebar’s Annotations tab uses the Page tags and linked dossiers currently shown in the sidebar. A floating-menu capture does not inherit them. The context-menu action Capture to dossier… assigns the selected dossier directly.

Dossier tags are labels, not inheritance rules

Tags on a dossier describe the dossier itself. They do not propagate to member pages or annotations, and a page or annotation tag does not automatically tag its dossiers. Apply a tag at every level where you want it to be searchable or visible.

For example, a dossier can carry housing, a page inside it can carry primary-source, and one annotation can carry needs-verification. Those three tags remain separate assignments.

Use the dossier detail as a working brief

Open Library → Dossiers → a dossier. Its detail includes:

• Overview for Name, Description, Tags, the Pinned checkbox, and page, annotation, and tag counts;
• Dossier Notes for a long-form dossier note;
• Pages In Dossier and Annotations In Dossier, each with its own search;
• Tags Used In Dossier and Sources By Domain as connected views;
• Export Panel for dossier-scoped formats; and
• Dossier Health for missing notes, unresolved highlights, duplicate URLs, and untagged items.

After changing Name, Description, Tags, Pinned, or the long-form note, choose Save in the dossier header. Pinning affects visibility and ordering; it does not change membership.

Archive a dossier cautiously

In Library → Dossiers, choose Archive on a dossier row or card and confirm. Archiving the dossier does not delete its pages or annotations, and their stored dossier IDs remain in the vault.

Enter tags in the format Redline stores

Tag fields are token-based. A space, comma, Enter, or Tab commits the current token; leaving the field also commits remaining text. Redline then lowercases, deduplicates, and alphabetically sorts the values.

Choose a tag pill’s × control to remove it from the current editor, then save the containing page, annotation, or dossier when that screen requires an explicit save.

Rename, merge, inspect, and remove tags

Open Library → Tags. Tag Management can search and sort the vocabulary and shows counts for Pages, Annotations, Dossiers, and imported or legacy Links data.

Rename or merge everywhere

1. Choose the existing value under Rename from.
2. Enter the destination under Rename / merge to.
3. Choose Rename / Merge.

This is a vault-wide operation: Redline replaces the tag on pages, annotations, dossiers, saved link records, and the tag record itself. If the destination tag already exists, the vocabulary is merged. Export a JSON backup first when a large rename would be difficult to undo manually.

Delete unused is offered only when the combined usage count is zero. It removes the unused saved tag record after confirmation; it is not a shortcut for stripping an in-use tag from research records.

Open a tag scope

Choose a tag name or Open Tag. The detail shows Pages and Annotations carrying that tag, Dossiers whose own tag list contains it, and Domains Represented by the matching pages and annotations.

Export Scope in the tag header creates a Markdown export. For another format, open Library → Exports, choose Scope → Tag, select the tag and format, then choose Export.

Assign tags and dossiers in bulk

Pages

Open Library → Pages and select one or more rows or cards. In the bulk bar, enter Tags and choose Add Tag or Remove Tag; or choose a Dossier and then Add or Remove.

Annotations

Open Library → Annotations and select records. Use the same Tags and Dossier controls to add or remove organization without opening each annotation. Create the dossier first; the bulk bar assigns existing dossiers.

Bulk changes affect only the selected record type. Adding a dossier to selected pages does not add their annotations, and adding it to selected annotations does not bulk-add their source pages.

Build a vocabulary that stays useful

• Prefer dossier names that make sense without surrounding context.
• Use one spelling and grammatical form for each tag; merge near-duplicates early.
• Use hyphens for concepts that must remain one tag.
• Avoid encoding every detail in a dossier name when a few stable tags express it better.

A safe organizing workflow

1. Create the active dossier in the sidebar when the current source belongs there, or in Library → Dossiers when you are planning first.
2. Link pages deliberately, then assign the annotations that belong in the same body of work.
3. Apply a small set of reusable, hyphenated tags to the exact record types where they matter.
4. Open the dossier detail to add its long-form note, pin active work, review missing context, and inspect source domains.
5. Before a vault-wide tag rename or dossier archive, go to Library → Exports, choose Scope → All data and Format → JSON backup, then choose Export.
6. Use the dossier Export Panel or the Library Exports builder when you need a focused research pack.