Everything will be scoped to the focused tag, including completions, search, and quick open. If you click on a wikilink leading out of the scope, you will be warned.
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I like this idea, even though I don’t often use nested tags right now. It would be nice if it would be possible to scope an MCP server to a tag in the same way, as a privacy-protecting measure to limit the scope of what an MCP client can see. Maybe as a command-line argument.
Edit: Just saw this comment from 15 minutes ago, along the same lines. +1!
Perfection. Thank yoU! Keep doing the great work that you do!
This sounds excellent and very Bear-like, sign me up!
I definitely like the idea of workspaces as a concept. Even though I’m still a Bear subscriber, it’s one of the main reasons I’ve honestly moved a lot of my notes to Obsidian. While I miss the simplicity of Bear and don’t enjoy the vault-switching experience in Obsidian, my notes need to exist in 3 distinct silos — they do not overlap. Always having to start with a top-level tag in Bear for new notes and especially not having workspace-limited searches is a regular point of friction.
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I don’t know if you’ve also considered backlinks. It makes sense to display all backlinks as well and not to filter them. A warning dialogue would be appropriate here too. Whilst it makes sense to filter everything down to the selected tag for tag completion, search and quick open, I’m not sure whether it wouldn’t be better to display all notes anyway when it comes to wiki links and its completion. The scopes generated by the feature are after all not quite the same as completely separate units, such as vaults would be. And you can tell this from the fact that the wiki links also point outside the scope.
May I ask whether you have already found a satisfactory solution for the so-called “external tags”. To give another reason for these so-called external tags: if it were possible to focus not only to tags but also to sections, this would fulfil a common feature request, namely to display tags for the archive.
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Yeah, we thought about it, but we’re filtering those out since showing them would leak info from outside the workspace (same goes for auto-completions). Links inside notes can still take you outside the workspace, but you’ll get a warning if you click one.
We’re pulling related tags into the workspace, BUT focusing on sections is a no-go for now (way too many edge cases 
)
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Actually I don’t know why I would focus on any other section. Just in the case of “archive” it would make sense and satisfy many users. If for that special section there is no edge case as they are anyway separated from the rest of the notes, then … 
I thought I’d offer my note-taking and use habits that don’t necessarily point to any solution or even suggestions. I’d like to stay out of the implementation debate.
I’m usually not patient enough to put the thought needed into decent tagging. I follow no prescribed tag methodology – not even a haphazard one of my own. So it rarely occurs to me to add any tags to a note when I create it.
I have used Claude to analyze and suggest a taxonomy and, after review, adjustment and approval, then allowed Claude to add tags. But being so lazy and undisciplined, I haven’t even made a tagging pass beyond the initial one. I could (and probably will) do it again – Claude will find notes with no tags and analyze if they fit my existing taxonomy and will propose new tags as needed.
I find that I rarely even look at the tag sidebar, often hiding it so I have more screen real estate for the note body. I occasionally ask Claude to show me a list of tags with note counts, just out of curiosity.
What I do find useful is searching by tag. But since the search term I tend to use is usually a child tag, and then, not typing out the full path to the tag, nothing is found. I then have to refer to the tag sidebar and wind up selecting the tag there, which produces the same list of results I’d have obtained had I searched for the correct tag in the first place. And this only works, of course, if I’ve taken the trouble to tag the note!
What really led me to post here is the use of the word “Focus”. I interpret this to mean “remove noise and distractions”. In my use of Bear, noise would be tags showing in the tag sidebar on notes I’m not “focusing” on, searches revealing notes I’m not “focusing” on and showing me a note list containing notes I’m not “focusing” on.
And it’s this concept of “containment” that I find desirable – the ol’ work/life separation thing. Some might even call a container a “workspace”. I think I’d be okay with seeing a tag inside a note that pointed to another container. Presumably, the names of the tag would impart that – but I wouldn’t want the “external” tag shown in the sidebar.
So my take is that I don’t have a strong opinion on the implementation, but when I focus, I don’t really want to see any “noise” bleeding in from outside the area (i.e. container or workspace) of focus. And I want to be able to define what I’m focusing on, and I want to be able to quickly switch from “focused” to “everything”. With my bad tagging/organizational habits I’m sure I’ll focus on a workspace/parent tag/container/whatever then and wonder why the note I want isn’t there. It will be because I didn’t put the right tag on it or put it in the right workspace. I hope I’m able to develop the habit of switching to “all” mode, finding the note, then tagging it properly to get it into the desired focus.
Which leads me to wonder, “can I have this containment without a tag?” – or, perhaps, a “silent” or “invisible” tag added automatically if a note is created in one of these containers and I forget to explicitly tag it with “this belongs in this container” (however the implementation would require it).
As I said, I wanted to stay out of the debate of how the UI should look and/or behave and how any of this implemented. I do think I would benefit from and use a way to constrain lists of notes and tags, and constrain searches, to “buckets” – subsets of all notes.
Sorry if this has already been stated or runs contrary to others’ stronger opinions.
I’m not sure if you’ve misunderstood the meaning of these socalled external tags. It’s not at all about linking to other containers. These external tags are tags that are contained within the focused container. You have to keep in mind that a note can contain several tags, not just one. So even though you’re focusing on one tag, you’ll still see all the tags contained in all the notes that include that focused tag. However notes that contain one of these external tags but not the focused tag are completely filtered out. But if you assign only a single tag to each note, then there won’t be any external tags displayed. In short: All the tags you see, including external ones, are included in the defined workspace. And they only display notes that belong to that workspace.
I’m glad I didn’t act on my first impulse and ask for an option in the backlinks panel to view all backlinks. To see all notes (even those outside the scope) within the autocompletion of wikilinks or to view all backlinks, it’s enough to have a quick way to exit the focus. A hotkey works and you’ve probably thought of that already. But it might also be a good idea to be able to return to the focus using the same hotkey. In my opinion that would be a perfect solution for all eventualities.
Yes, exactly my misunderstanding of the term “external”.
Thanks for the clarification.
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I’ve already thought through how I could and would use this feature. One useful function came to mind. It would be great if you could focus on a tag not only from the sidebar but also from the editor, for example by right-clicking or using a hotkey.
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