Write a producer

Any tool that writes conforming markdown+frontmatter into the vault is a valid producer. That sentence is the whole integration story — the contracts are published so the adapter list never needs to be. Curio and Zotero integrate exactly this way; so can your exporter, clipper, or pipeline.

Emit kp-note/v1 files

One markdown file per note, YAML frontmatter first:

---
kp_id: "kp:0197b2c4-8f3e-7cc1-a5d2-3e9f10aa4b6d"
kp_schema: kp-note/v1
checksum: "sha256:9f86d08..."     # change token ONLY, never identity
title: "Article title"
created: 2026-07-03T09:15:00Z
updated: 2026-07-03T10:00:00Z
tags: [rust, databases]
source: "https://example.com/article"   # null for born-in-vault notes
---

The normative spec (with JSON Schema) is contracts/kp-note/v1.md. The rules that matter most when producing:

1. Mint kp_id, never derive it. Identity comes from the producer at creation time and survives renames, edits, and re-exports. Notes without kp_id get the implicit path:<relpath> identity — it works, but it's rename-fragile; real producers mint.
2. checksum is a change token only. Consumers must never key anything on it; two notes with identical bodies are still two notes.
3. No status field. Lifecycle lives index-side. Producer re-exports re-render whole files — injected lifecycle fields would be silently clobbered, so the contract forbids them outright.
4. Preserve unknown frontmatter keys. The contract block is what the plane reads and writes; everything else belongs to the user and other tools. If your producer re-renders files, round-trip what you don't own.

If you re-export: own a marked region

A producer that re-renders its notes (rather than writing once) should follow the managed-region pattern Curio and Zotero use: keep machine content inside a clearly marked comment region and replace only that region on re-export. Users write below the markers; enrichment and manual notes survive every sync. See how Zotero notes do it.

Then Curator does the rest

curator ingest        # picks up new and changed files incrementally

Ingest hashes files, so unchanged notes cost nothing; changed notes are re-chunked and re-embedded; wiki and markdown links become graph edges. Your producer's notes are immediately searchable, relatable, and citable through the MCP surface — no registration, no plugin API, no adapter to submit.

Choosing an identity namespace

If you want boundary validation like the built-in producers have, publish a JSON Schema for your format — the Curio adapter's sha-pinned vendoring is the pattern to copy.