Collections & Schemas

Collections are the core organizational unit in Pad. Each collection defines a type of item with its own set of typed fields and behaviors.

Default Collections

Every new workspace comes with six default collections:

Tasks

Track work items, bugs, and to-dos.

Field	Type	Options
status	select	open, in-progress, done, cancelled
priority	select	low, medium, high, critical
assignee	text	—
due_date	date	—
effort	select	xs, s, m, l, xl
(parent link)	—	Any item can be a child of another item via --parent

Ideas

Capture ideas, feature requests, and inspiration.

Field	Type	Options
status	select	new, exploring, planned, rejected
impact	select	low, medium, high
category	text	—

Plans

Track project plans and milestones.

Field	Type	Options
status	select	planned, active, completed, paused
start_date	date	—
end_date	date	—
progress	number	computed, auto-calculated from linked tasks

Docs

Documentation, notes, and reference material.

Field	Type	Options
status	select	draft, published, archived
category	text	—

Conventions

Project-specific rules that AI agents follow automatically.

Field	Type	Options
status	select	active, draft, disabled
trigger	select	always, on-task-start, on-task-complete, on-implement, on-commit, on-pr-create, on-plan
scope	select	all, backend, frontend, mobile, docs, devops
priority	select	must, should, nice-to-have

Playbooks

Multi-step workflows for specific actions or scenarios.

Field	Type	Options
status	select	active, draft, deprecated
trigger	select	always, on-task-start, on-task-complete, on-implement, on-commit, on-pr-create, on-plan
scope	select	all, backend, frontend, mobile, docs, devops

Custom Collections

Create your own collections with custom schemas:

pad collection create "Bugs" 
  --fields "severity:select:low,medium,high,critical; browser:text; reproducible:select:yes,no,sometimes" 
  --icon "🐛"

Field Types

Type	Description	Example
text	Free-form text	assignee, category
select	Single choice from options	status, priority
multi_select	Multiple choices from options	tags, labels
number	Numeric value	progress, story points
date	Date value	due_date, start_date
checkbox	Boolean true/false	reproducible, verified
url	URL value	link, repository
relation	Link to another collection	linked references between items

Items

Items belong to a collection and have:

• Title — the item name, used to generate a URL-friendly slug
• Fields — structured data matching the collection’s schema
• Content — optional rich markdown body (notes, descriptions, documentation)
• Tags — free-form labels for additional categorization

Wiki Links

Connect items across collections using [[wiki links]]:

This task implements the design from [[Auth Architecture]].
See also [[OAuth Bug]] for the related issue.

Wiki links resolve by title across all items in the workspace. In the web UI, they render as clickable links. In the CLI, they’re preserved as-is in markdown content.

Slugs

Every item gets a URL-friendly slug derived from its title:

• “Fix OAuth Redirect” → fix-oauth-redirect
• “Plan 2: API Redesign” → plan-2-api-redesign

Slugs are unique within a workspace and used in CLI commands:

pad item show fix-oauth-redirect
pad item update fix-oauth-redirect --status done