collection

A command for treating a folder of Markdown files as a table, with files as rows and frontmatter fields as columns. Frontmatter is the metadata written at the top of a Markdown file.

In plain words
What is it for?
Use it to query direct or nested Markdown files, filter by metadata, sort results, limit or skip rows, use a configured Shard, and resolve one level of metadata relations.
Why use it?
It makes it easier to find, sort, filter, and page through structured notes without writing a full database query.

Command

Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

agentmods
npx agentmods add commands/geckse/markdown-vdb/collection
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/geckse/markdown-vdb
Per session 13 Only the description is in the session, so the agent can decide to use it. The body loads when it is invoked.
When invoked 1,299 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. Scan, not verified.
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5 $0.00013 $0.01299
Opus 5 $0.00006 $0.00649
Sonnet 5 $0.00003 $0.00260
Haiku 4.5 $0.00001 $0.00130

Measured 2d ago against content hash accbc866e439, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-08-30, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

collection scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 2d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

docs/cli/commands/collection.md · 160 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 160 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

mdvdb collection

Query a folder as a table: Markdown files are rows and frontmatter fields are columns. mdvdb list is an alias for this command.

The interface is SQL-like, not a SQL parser. A folder or Shard supplies the table scope, repeated filters act like equality predicates, and sorting plus limit/offset provide deterministic pagination.

Usage

mdvdb collection [OPTIONS] [PATH]

Arguments and options

Name Short Default Description
[PATH] . Relative folder scope
--shard <ID> Use a configured Shard; conflicts with PATH
--recursive -r false Include all nested folders; otherwise return direct children only
--sort <FIELD> path Sort by a top-level frontmatter field
--order <ORDER> asc asc or desc; used with --sort
--filter <KEY=VALUE> -f Equality filter; repeat for AND logic
--limit <N> all Maximum rows in the page
--offset <N> 0 Rows to skip after filtering and sorting
--populate false Resolve frontmatter relations on returned rows, one level deep

The command also accepts all global options.

Query semantics

Without --recursive, mdvdb collection projects returns Markdown files directly inside projects/. With --recursive, it also includes documents in nested folders.

--filter exposes equality only in the CLI:

  • Each filter addresses one top-level frontmatter field.
  • Repeated filters use AND logic.
  • Exact lowercase true and false become booleans; valid JSON numbers become numbers; other values remain strings.
  • A list field matches when any item equals the filter value.
  • Materialized Formula, Lookup, and Rollup values participate in filtering and sorting.
  • Link-shaped relation values are syntax-normalized, so clients/acme, clients/acme.md, and [[clients/acme]] can match [[clients/acme|Acme]].

Sorting is type-aware and keeps missing or null values last in either direction. If --sort is omitted, rows are ordered by path ascending.

Read the full file on GitHub · 160 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 2d ago First seen · 160 lines · 13 tokens per session scan A accbc866e439

Subscribe to this mod's changes

collection is a command published in the GitHub repository geckse/markdown-vdb (23 stars, last pushed 18d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 13 tokens to every session and 1,299 once invoked, about $0.0001 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.