A model is a record type you design; a field is one typed slot on it. Getting the fields right is most of the work, so Simplist makes them easy to change later.
Creating and editing a model
Models → New model asks for a singular and a plural name, then lets you add fields one at a time. Each field has a name and a type, and you can reorder them — field order is the order they appear on the form and in the table view.
Come back any time through a model’s Edit page. Adding a field is safe: existing documents simply have it empty.
Both a model and each of its fields can have a short description: what the model is for, or what belongs in a field. A model’s description shows under its name; a field’s shows as a hint above it on the record form. AI agents connected to your workspace read them too.
As a workspace grows, the record form starts helping: a text field suggests the values you already use most, and a relation field offers to link records your text already mentions by name (“Finished Dune again” offers to link Dune). Nothing is linked until you choose it.
The main field
Every model nominates one field as its main field. That is the value used to title a document in lists, in search results, and anywhere another record links to it. Choose the thing a person would say out loud to identify the record — a book’s title, a client’s name, a bug’s summary.
Field types
| Type | Holds |
|---|---|
| Text | A single line |
| Long text | Multiple lines of plain text |
| Rich document | Formatted text: headings, lists, links, checklists, images |
| URL | A web address |
| Link embed | A web address that always renders as a preview card |
| An email address | |
| Phone | A phone number |
| Number | Any number |
| USD | A currency amount |
| Rating | A star rating |
| Date | A calendar date |
| DateTime | A date and a time |
| Checkbox / Switch | A yes-or-no value |
| Select | One option from a list you define |
| Multi-select | Any number of options from a list you define |
| File | One or more uploaded files |
| Location | A point on a map |
| Relation | A link to documents of another model |
| Formula | A value computed from other fields on the same document |
| Auto-number | A number assigned automatically, in creation order |
| Rollup | A number summarising related documents — sum, count, min, max or average |
URL and Link embed store the same thing; the difference is presentation. Pick Link embed when the link is the content, and URL when it is a reference.
Relations
A Relation field points at another model, and linking is how Simplist stops being a pile of separate lists. A Book can point at its Author; open the Author and the Books pointing at it are visible from that side too, under the inverse name you give the relation.
When the options only make sense inside this one model — a set of stages, a handful of categories you will never reference elsewhere — choose Nested options instead. It authors a hidden model inline so you do not clutter your sidebar with a model that exists to serve one field.
Lookup lists and child models
Some models exist only to be picked from: film stocks for a Movie, countries for a Client. You can group a lookup model like that under the model it serves as a child model. It keeps its own fields and documents, but drops out of the sidebar and the models list and is reached from the parent’s Child models section instead.
- New child model, on a top-level model’s page, creates one and gives the parent a relation field to it straight away.
- Model actions → Nest under Parent moves a model you already have under the model its relation fields point at.
Nesting is one level deep. The rules, and when to choose a child model over Nested options or a Select field, are in Child models and option lists.
Formulas, rollups and auto-numbers
These three fields compute rather than store:
- A Formula derives a value from other fields on the same document.
- A Rollup summarises the documents on the other end of a relation — the count of a client’s invoices, the sum of their amounts.
- An Auto-number hands each new document the next number in sequence.
They update themselves; you never type into them.
Due dates
A model can nominate one of its Date or DateTime fields as its due date: on the model’s Edit page, a date field row offers Use as due date. The dashboard’s Due soon widget then lists documents due in the next week, plus anything already overdue going back thirty days, most urgent first.
Only nominated fields appear there, and that limit is the point. A birthday, a publication date and a deadline look identical to a database; an agenda built from every date in your workspace would be mostly things nobody has to act on.
The Calendar page is deliberately not filtered this way — see Views and search.
Changing a field later
A field’s type is fixed once it exists — the type decides how values are stored — but you are not stuck with your first guess either way:
- Rename a field at any time. Nothing else changes.
- Convert to collection turns a Select or Multi-select field into a real model of its own plus a Relation field pointing at it — for when a list of options has grown up into something you want to describe with fields of its own. Existing selections are carried over as relations.
- Merge one field into another with Merge into…. The source field’s values are written into the target and the source field is removed. Merging works within the text family — Text, Long text, URL, Email, Phone and Rich document — and you pick what happens where the target already has a value: append below it, fill only empties, or overwrite. Merging the main field is allowed; the target becomes the new main field.
Every merge is reversible. The Edit page keeps a Recent field merges list with an Undo that restores the source field, its values, and the target’s previous state in one click.
- Field history on a field row shows how that field itself has changed over time.
Deleting a model
Deleting a model deletes its documents with it, so the delete page asks you to confirm by name. Export first if you are unsure — see Import, export and backups.