Inlay Hints

Inlay hints are visual annotations that appear inline within your document, providing contextual information without requiring navigation. IWE provides two types of inlay hints.

Note Header Hints

At the top of each document, IWE displays information about the note’s position in your knowledge graph.

What’s Shown

• Parent document title: Shows which document links to this note
• Links counter: Number of incoming references (backlinks)

Example

When viewing project-ideas.md:

                                    [linked from: Index] [3 links]
# Project Ideas

Your content here...

This tells you that “Index” links to this document and there are 3 total backlinks.

Block Reference Hints

When viewing a block reference link, inlay hints show which notes directly reference the linked content.

What’s Shown

• Parent notes list: The direct parent notes (one level up) that link to the referenced content

Example

# Daily Notes

[Meeting Notes](meeting-2024)           [Index, Journal]

The hint [Index, Journal] shows that the linked note is referenced from both “Index” and “Journal” documents.

Enabling Inlay Hints

VS Code

Inlay hints should work automatically. If not visible, check:

1. Open Settings (Ctrl+, / Cmd+,)
2. Search for “inlay hints”
3. Enable “Editor: Inlay Hints”

Neovim

Enable inlay hints in your LSP configuration:

vim.lsp.inlay_hint.enable(true)

Or toggle with a keybinding:

vim.keymap.set('n', '<leader>ih', function()
  vim.lsp.inlay_hint.enable(not vim.lsp.inlay_hint.is_enabled())
end)

Helix

Inlay hints are enabled by default. Configure in config.toml:

[editor.lsp]
display-inlay-hints = true

Benefits

• Context at a glance: Understand note relationships without navigating away
• Track connections: See how many documents link to the current note
• Navigate hierarchy: Understand where content fits in your knowledge structure