Backlinks & unlinked mentions
A backlink is any note that links to the note you're reading — Altretta surfaces them automatically so connected ideas find their way back to you. Alongside them, Altretta finds unlinked mentions: every place a note's name appears in your vault without a link yet.
Backlinks
When you're viewing a note, Altretta lists the other notes that link to it. You never have to maintain this by hand — write a wikilink in one note and it shows up as a backlink in the other. Backlinks turn a folder of files into a web: from any idea you can see everything that references it, and jump straight there.
Unlinked mentions
An unlinked mention is a spot where your note's title (or an alias) is written as plain text, with no link. These are ideas you connected in your head but never wired together on the page — and they're exactly the connections that otherwise get lost.
Open a note
Any note's connection panel shows its backlinks and, below them, its unlinked mentions.
Review the mentions
Each mention shows the surrounding text so you can confirm it really refers to this note.
Link it in one action
Convert an unlinked mention into a real link in a single action — the plain text becomes a wikilink, and the mention becomes a backlink.
Unlinked mentions are one of the fastest ways to grow your graph. Sweep them periodically and you'll surface connections you forgot you'd made.
Why it matters
Backlinks and unlinked mentions are how a note gets rediscovered. Instead of relying on where you filed something, you find it through what it connects to — the associative way you actually think.
Every link you create this way also becomes an edge in Altretta's semantic graph, which is what lets the AI traverse your notes to ground its answers.
Related
The graph
Back to the overview of backlinks, the graph view, and the semantic graph.
Links & embeds
How to write wikilinks, aliases, and embeds — the raw material of every backlink.
The graph view
See the same connections laid out in the navigable 3D graph you can filter and explore.
Grounded, cited answers ✦
The edges you create let your AI traverse your notes and answer with citations.
Glossary
Backlink, unlinked mention, edge, wikilink — defined.