A reference, not a read. Wherever a term first appears on a page in this handbook, a link points here.
How to write notes — callouts, bases, canvases, frontmatter fields — is explained by the handbook of the example template Example, which has a larger glossary of its own. What follows is what QuartzControl itself says.
Base URL
The address the finished site will be reachable at, without https:// — notes.example.com, say.
Quartz builds every link, the RSS feed and the preview images from it. Set under Setup →
Configuration; while it is unknown, localhost stays.
Branch
One strand in a repository’s history. A project always
sits on exactly one; push and pull refer to it. When publishing via GitHub Pages the target branch
is usually gh-pages and pointedly not the one you work on — it is replaced wholesale on every
deploy.
Build
The process in which Quartz turns the content folder
into a finished website: Markdown becomes HTML, plus a search index, a graph and stylesheets. The
result lands in an output folder, usually public. Every build empties that folder first —
which is why QuartzControl asks when something in there does not look like a build.
Commit
A saved state in a repository’s history, with a date, an author and a description. A snapshot is technically one too — but in a history of its own that only QuartzControl knows about.
Community theme
A ready-made colour scheme from the @quartz-themes ecosystem, installed and activated under
Design → Community themes. It sits in the second of the four layers: it overrides the base colours,
and is overridden in turn by your own CSS variables and your own CSS.
Connection
A login with a provider: server, username, password or key. A connection belongs to QuartzControl, not to a project — the same webspace account can carry several sites, and a password change is then one change rather than one per project.
Content folder
The content/ folder in the project, holding the Markdown files the site is built from. It is
either a real folder or a link to a folder outside the
project — to a vault, for instance.
CSS variable
A named value a stylesheet uses in many places — a colour, a spacing, a font size. Change it once and everything using it changes. Quartz derives many variables from a few base colours; the Variables tab shows, for each one, where its value comes from and what depends on it.
Dev server
A program that builds the site, serves it at http://localhost:<port> and rebuilds on every change
to a note. The preview in QuartzControl is exactly that. It keeps running when the window is
closed, and is never stopped on its own.
Frame
The grid of a page: which areas exist — header, sidebars, content, footer —, where they sit and how wide they are. Quartz brings three (default, full-width, minimal); your own are built in the layout editor, for three screen widths each. What appears in those areas is decided by another tab.
Frontmatter
The block between two lines of three dashes at the very top of a Markdown file. It holds the title, description, date, tags and everything else a page says about itself.
Git sync
Reconciling the project with a repository — uploading (push) and downloading (pull). Meant for sharing and for the second machine. Not to be confused with a snapshot, which is for going back, nor with publishing, which sends the finished site.
Host key
The fingerprint a server identifies itself with when connecting over SFTP or rsync. The first time, QuartzControl asks and remembers it. If it changes later, QuartzControl stops: that can be a freshly set-up server — or somebody in between.
Keychain
The operating system’s encrypted store for passwords (macOS: Keychain, Windows: Credential Manager, Linux: gnome-keyring or KWallet). QuartzControl puts passwords and tokens there, not in a file of its own. Where one is missing on a Linux system, the start screen says so explicitly.
Link
An entry in the filesystem pointing at another folder without copying it — a symbolic link, technically. The content folder can be built that way: it then is the vault, and whoever writes there writes at the source.
Markdown
A plain way of writing text in which **bold** becomes bold and # Heading a heading. Every note
is a text file ending in .md.
Marketplace
The list of plugins from the quartz-community organisation on GitHub, searchable and installable
with one click. Plugins from elsewhere are added via owner/repo.
Page type
A kind of page Quartz distinguishes: the ordinary content page, the start page, a tag page, a folder page. Each page type can be given a frame of its own.
Part
One piece of a template package. There are twelve: colours and fonts, community theme, plugins, layout, frames, presets, translations, stylesheets, fonts, static files, CSS variables and the content. Each is picked or left out individually, on export as on import.
What appears on the page is a plugin or a component instead — until 2026-09-07 QuartzControl called that a “part” in one place too.
Plugin
A building block of Quartz with one job: one builds the explorer on the left, one the table of
contents on the right, one the search, one reads a file’s date. Some appear visibly on the page,
others only change the content behind the scenes. Which are active and how they are configured is
in quartz.config.yaml.
Preset
A saved set of theme settings under a name of its own. Useful for keeping two colour worlds side by side without losing the first.
Project
A folder holding a Quartz installation: the configuration, the content folder, the stylesheets, the plugins. QuartzControl can manage several; everything except the start screen and the settings applies to one of them.
Publishing
Getting the finished site to where it belongs — via GitHub Pages, SFTP, rsync, FTP, into a folder or through a webhook. Two things belong to it: a connection and a target.
Quartz
The static site generator QuartzControl drives. It understands Obsidian’s notation and builds a site with backlinks, a graph view and full-text search.
Repository
A folder whose history git records. If it also lives on a server — GitHub, say — it can be used from several machines.
Snapshot
A copy of this project that only QuartzControl knows about. It stays inside the project, is never uploaded, and does not touch your own git history. QuartzControl takes one on its own before every larger change; you can restore the whole project or a single file.
Static site generator
A program that turns a folder full of text files into a folder full of finished HTML pages. The result needs no database and no program on the server — it simply sits there and is served.
Target
Where this project publishes to: the server path, the deletion behaviour, the exclusions — and which connection is used for it. A target belongs to a project.
Template package
A single file ending in .qtpl holding a project’s design — colours, theme, stylesheets, fonts,
layout, frames, plugins, translations — and carrying it into another project. Assembled from twelve
parts that can be picked and left out individually.
Token
A password substitute for an interface, here: for GitHub. Without one the
marketplace is exhausted after a few requests; creating a
repository and using GitHub Pages additionally needs the repo permission.
Vault
A folder full of notes, as Obsidian manages it. A content folder can point straight at one — then you write in Obsidian and the site follows.
Wikilink
A link in double square brackets, [[like this]], the way Obsidian writes it. Quartz resolves it at
build time. How the targets are written — shortest form, absolute or relative — has to match your
notes in the configuration, or the links find nothing.