mdvdb get

Retrieve index metadata for one Markdown document. The command reports its frontmatter, computed values and diagnostics, chunk count, file size, content hash, and timestamps.

Usage

mdvdb get [OPTIONS] <FILE_PATH>

Name	Required	Description
`<FILE_PATH>`	Yes	Project-relative path as stored in the index
`--populate`	No	Resolve frontmatter relations and reverse references, one level deep

The command also accepts all global options, including --json and --root.

Examples

# Inspect metadata
mdvdb get docs/api.md

# Include resolved relation targets and documents that reference this file
mdvdb get invoices/invoice-104.md --populate

# Machine-readable output
mdvdb get invoices/invoice-104.md --populate --json

JSON output

{
  "path": "invoices/invoice-104.md",
  "content_hash": "a1b2c3d4e5f67890...",
  "frontmatter": {
    "title": "Invoice 104",
    "client": "[[clients/acme]]",
    "price": 120,
    "quantity": 2,
    "total": 240
  },
  "computed_fields": {
    "total": 240
  },
  "computed_field_errors": {},
  "chunk_count": 3,
  "file_size": 712,
  "indexed_at": 1770000100,
  "modified_at": 1770000000,
  "relations": {
    "client": [
      {
        "raw": "[[clients/acme]]",
        "path": "clients/acme.md",
        "exists": true,
        "title": "Acme",
        "frontmatter": {
          "title": "Acme",
          "domain": "acme.example"
        }
      }
    ]
  },
  "referenced_by": [
    {
      "source": "payments/payment-104.md",
      "field": "invoice",
      "title": "Payment 104"
    }
  ]
}

Fields

Field	Type	Description
`path`	`string`	Project-relative document path
`content_hash`	`string`	SHA-256 hash used for change detection
`frontmatter`	`object \| null`	Parsed, materialized YAML frontmatter; authoritative value surface
`computed_fields`	`object`	Successful Formula, Lookup, and Rollup values mirrored for provenance
`computed_field_errors`	`object`	Diagnostics keyed by computed field name
`chunk_count`	`number`	Number of indexed text chunks
`file_size`	`number`	File size in bytes
`indexed_at`	`number`	Unix timestamp of the last ingest
`modified_at`	`number \| null`	Filesystem modification timestamp
`relations`	`object`	Resolved frontmatter relations; present only with `--populate`
`referenced_by`	`array`	Reverse frontmatter references; present only with `--populate`

A computed-field diagnostic has module, field, stable code, human-readable message, and optional span_start/span_end byte offsets.

Each populated relation contains:

raw: the literal frontmatter value.
path: resolved project-relative target, or null if it cannot be resolved.
exists: whether the target exists in the indexed file set.
title: target display title, or null for a missing target.
frontmatter: raw target frontmatter, or null; it is never populated recursively.

When --populate is omitted, relations and referenced_by are absent rather than null.

Notes

get returns metadata and matched relation context, not the Markdown body.
get is read-only and never recomputes modules or modifies the index.
If the path is not indexed, run mdvdb ingest and check mdvdb tree.