When you set up Capacities, it can be hard to know how to apply each concept. This is our opinionated guide. It suits long-term use and keeps the maintenance load low through the use of queries, which update automatically for you.

In short, use labels for categorization and use tags for topics.

Object types already answer what type of thing something is: a Book, a Person, a Meeting. Labels define those things more specifically: type of book, type of person, type of meeting, and tags sit on top of that, linking any object together by their topic.

Labels: categorize inside one object type

A label lives on one object type. Every object of that type picks from the same fixed list.

Use it to categorize within that type: fiction or non-fiction on Books, friend or colleague on People, 1:1 or standup on Meetings.

To add a label: object type settings → Add property → label. You can add as many labels as needed to the set.

To see all objects with a given label value: click on the object type in the left sidebar to see that object type’s dashboard, click the + near the section controls, open Recommendations, and choose a query that filters by that label (or add the filter yourself).

Tags: what is this about?

A tag is a topic. You can tag anything: whole objects and individual blocks.

When you open a tag, you see everything related to that topic across your space. That is the point: not which object type it is, and not which label category, but what it is about.

Add tags under the title of an object, or in text with #.

Saved queries (including those from Recommendations) are part of Capacities Pro. On every plan you can still filter and sort on the object type dashboard.

Collections: manual lists

A collection is a group you build by hand inside one object type. You add each object yourself, and you remove it when it no longer belongs. That is the difference from labels and queries: a collection does not fill itself from a category or a rule.

Labels and queries can also group content. A label is a fixed category on that type (for example fiction vs non-fiction). A query follows rules and updates when content matches (for example every book with status “Reading”).

We recommend a collection when you want a list you curate one item at a time, and you are happy to maintain it yourself.