How do I show a doc by UUID?
For finding the UUID in the first place by regex, tag, type, or folder, see How do I find docs matching a pattern?.
Question
I have a UUID (e.g. from an [[id:...]] link, a compass list row, or
a glossary entry) — how do I see the document it points to, the
context around it, and the docs that link to or from it?
Answer
Run ./projects/ores.compass/compass.sh show with the UUID. Any
unambiguous prefix of 6 or more hex characters is accepted.
By full UUID:
./projects/ores.compass/compass.sh show 47341fc6-b8fb-499e-aae0-f4ee0abfda05
By prefix — short but unambiguous (typically 8 chars is plenty):
./projects/ores.compass/compass.sh show 47341fc6
Heading-level anchors resolve too — sub-headings with their own
:PROPERTIES: :ID:block (e.g. glossary entries, agile process phases,Cybernetic Levelssystems) are indexed as anchors. The tool prints the parent doc and the section body:./projects/ores.compass/compass.sh show fabb50e5 # Release entry in glossary ./projects/ores.compass/compass.sh show 7d72a9da # Sprint closure phase
Output sections
For a file-level doc:
- Title / Type / Path / Tags / Updated / Desc — header metadata.
- Blurb — the paragraph between frontmatter and the first heading.
- Outgoing links — every
[[id:UUID]]reference in the body, resolved touuid | type | title (path). Unresolved targets are flaggedBROKEN. Anchors show as typeanchorwith their parent doc name. - Incoming links — every doc whose body links to this one, same shape.
For an anchor (heading-level :ID:):
- Heading / In doc / Path / Parent — anchor identity.
- Section — the heading body down to the next sibling-or-higher heading.
- Incoming links — docs whose body links to this anchor.
Workflow
The two doc tools compose:
# 1. find — list candidates ./projects/ores.compass/compass.sh list --regex 'release' # 2. focus — pick a UUID and inspect it ./projects/ores.compass/compass.sh show fabb50e5
Script
The wrapper is projects/ores.compass/compass.sh show. It calls
projects/ores.compass/src/doc_show.py, which uses the shared
doc_index.py library (file-level docs + heading anchors + inbound
index, all built on a single walk of every .org file under the repo).
Tested by
Manual usage — read-only over the doc tree. Broken-link detection
relies on every doc carrying a stable :ID:, audited by
lifecycle / document types.
See also
- How do I find docs matching a pattern? — finding the UUID by search before pivoting here.
- Document types — the link contract every doc satisfies.
- Recipes index.