Field guide / Rule 19 — From Markdown
A working note carries scaffolding: a reminder in %%double percents%% only you should see, a ^block-id that anchors a link back to a paragraph. They’re useful while you write and meaningless once you’re done. A finished document should carry none of it — so before anything is rendered, we take it out.
%%…%% is the Markdown comment convention editors like Obsidian use: a private aside that never shows in reading view. We honour that exactly — a comment is stripped before the document is built, whether it’s a few words mid-line or a block that runs across several lines. Leave one unclosed and we treat everything to the end of the file as commented out. What you wrote for yourself stays with you.
When you link to a specific paragraph, editors tag it with a trailing ^block-id. It’s an address, not something a reader should ever see. On the way out we strip the marker and leave the paragraph itself untouched, so the sentence reads as written — without a stray ^a1b2c3 hanging off the end.
The private markup is removed from prose; anything inside a code block or your frontmatter — where %% and a leading ^ carry real meaning — is passed through exactly as written.
A comment and a block-id written into a sentence simply aren’t there when the page renders — the reader sees only the finished line:
You write
The plan is approved. %%run it past legal first%% ^plan-final
In the shared page
The plan is approved.
In short
The %%comments%% and ^block-ids you keep for yourself are scaffolding, and a finished document should show none of it. We strip both before anything renders — and leave those same characters alone inside your code and frontmatter, where they carry real meaning.
Want to see it on your own notes? Convert a document and your private marks stay behind.