Text Notes and Threads

1 Overview

NIP-10 defines kind:1, the plain text note. It is the most common event kind on Nostr. A user writes a short message; the client wraps it in an event and publishes it, following the rules of NIP-01.

A text note can stand alone, or it can reply to another text note. This NIP defines how a reply points back to the note it answers, and how a client walks a chain of replies to rebuild a thread. It also defines how a note can cite, or quote, another event without turning that citation into a reply.

Two tagging schemes exist for replies. The marked e-tag scheme is preferred. It labels each e tag with a marker, so a client always knows which tag is the thread root and which is the direct parent. An older positional scheme relies only on tag order. It is deprecated, but old events still use it, so every client must still be able to read it.

2 Kind 1 - The Text Note

A kind:1 event is a simple text note. The content field holds human-readable text. Clients SHOULD NOT put markup languages such as Markdown or HTML in content. A client renders content as plain text.

An event references other events and users through three tags:

The author of any event referenced by an e or q tag SHOULD also be added as a p tag. This notifies that author of the new reply or quote.

3 Marked "e" Tags (Preferred)

A kind:1 event with an e tag is a reply to another kind:1 event. Kind-1 replies MUST NOT be used to reply to any other kind. To reply to a different kind, use NIP-22 instead.

["e", <event-id>, <relay-url>, <marker>, <pubkey>]

An e tag marked "root" holds the id of the event at the root of the thread. An e tag marked "reply" holds the id of the event this note directly answers. A top-level reply, one that answers the root itself, uses only a single "root"-marked tag; it does not also add a "reply" tag for the same event. A direct reply to the root of a thread has exactly one marked e tag, of type "root".

Order the marked e tags by the reply stack, from the root to the direct parent. This scheme is preferred over the positional scheme because it lets an event mention other events without any risk of confusing a mention with the root id or the reply id.

The pubkey element supports the outbox model: when a relay hint fails to resolve an event, a client can look for it on the referenced author's own write relays instead.

4 Quoting with "q" Tags

A q tag MAY be used when the content of a note cites another event using a nostr: URI, as defined in NIP-21. A citation is not a reply. It does not change the thread structure.

["q", <event-id> or <event-address>, <relay-url>, <pubkey-if-a-regular-event>]

The author of a q-tagged event SHOULD also be added as a p tag, to notify them that their note was quoted.

5 The "p" Tag - Notifying Participants

A text note's p tags list the pubkeys involved in a reply thread. When a client builds a reply to a text event E, the reply's p tags SHOULD contain every p tag already on E, plus the pubkey of E itself. The order of these tags does not matter.

Example: event E is authored by a1 and carries p tags [p1, p2, p3]. A reply to E should carry p tags [a1, p1, p2, p3], in any order.

6 Deprecated Positional "e" Tags

Positional e tags carry no marker. They use the plain NIP-01 form:

["e", <event-id>, <relay-url>]

relay-url is the URL of a recommended relay for the reference. Many clients treat this field as optional. Without a marker, the only way to read the tag's meaning is its position in the tags array. This scheme is deprecated because it creates ambiguity that is hard, or impossible, to resolve when an event references another event but is not replying to it.

7 Worked Example

The session below builds the thread from Fig. 10-1 using the marked scheme, then fetches it back, then publishes a quote note with a q tag. Orange lines go to the relay. Blue lines come from the relay.

-- Author 22a12a12... publishes the root note --
→ ["EVENT", {"id":"b1a649ebe8…","pubkey":"22a12a12…","kind":1,
     "tags":[],"content":"Running nostr.","sig":"e8551d85…"}]
← ["OK", "b1a649ebe8…", true, ""]

-- Author 7a44bb90... replies directly to the root (Reply A) --
→ ["EVENT", {"id":"9f2c11ab…","pubkey":"7a44bb90…","kind":1,
     "tags":[["e","b1a649ebe8…","wss://relay.example.com","root","22a12a12…"],
             ["p","22a12a12…"]],
     "content":"Nice, which relay?","sig":"a02fbd41…"}]
← ["OK", "9f2c11ab…", true, ""]

-- Author 3b9012fa... replies to Reply A, not to the root (Reply B) --
→ ["EVENT", {"id":"5cf203de…","pubkey":"3b9012fa…","kind":1,
     "tags":[["e","b1a649ebe8…","wss://relay.example.com","root","22a12a12…"],
             ["e","9f2c11ab…","wss://relay.example.com","reply","7a44bb90…"],
             ["p","7a44bb90…"],["p","22a12a12…"]],
     "content":"Same one I use.","sig":"77c1e0aa…"}]
← ["OK", "5cf203de…", true, ""]

-- A client fetches the whole thread by the root id --
→ ["REQ", "thread", {"kinds":[1], "#e": ["b1a649ebe8…"]}]
← ["EVENT", "thread", {"id":"9f2c11ab…", …}]
← ["EVENT", "thread", {"id":"5cf203de…", …}]
← ["EOSE", "thread"]
→ ["CLOSE", "thread"]

-- A separate note quotes Reply A without replying to it --
→ ["EVENT", {"id":"d40a99c1…","pubkey":"91fedc22…","kind":1,
     "tags":[["q","9f2c11ab…","wss://relay.example.com","7a44bb90…"],
             ["p","7a44bb90…"]],
     "content":"Good point: nostr:nevent1q9f2c11ab…","sig":"f13b0c8e…"}]
← ["OK", "d40a99c1…", true, ""]

8 Version History

NIP-10 has changed mostly by tightening the marked scheme and clarifying its edge cases. Notable changes, newest first:

• 20252025-02Removed the "mention" e-tag marker; citations now use the q tag and NIP-21 instead (#1750).
• 20252025-02Clarified that kind-1 replies must target only other kind-1 events; use NIP-22 for replies to other kinds (#1690).
• 20252025-01Folded the kind:1 text-note definition itself into this NIP (#1076).
• 20242024-11Reorganized the document, moving the deprecated positional scheme to the end.
• 20242024-04Added the optional pubkey as the 5th element of the marked e tag, for outbox-model lookups.
• 2022-2024variousTypo fixes, JSON reformatting, header-style cleanups, and removal of the per-NIP author byline.
• 20232023-02Clarified that the relay-url element should be a valid URL or an empty string, not simply omitted (#291).
• 20222022-12Clarified that a direct reply to the thread root uses a single e tag marked "root", not "reply".
• 20222022-11Added the (now-removed) "mention" marker to the marked e-tag scheme.
• Origin2022-05-04Robert C. Martin published "NIP-13: Conventions for e and p tags in text events"; renamed to NIP-10 the same day.

9 See Also

• NIP-01 — the event object, and the base e/p/a tag definitions this NIP builds on.
• NIP-21 — the nostr: URI scheme cited by q tags.
• NIP-22 — the comment kind, used to reply to events that are not kind:1.
• NIP-19 — bech32 encodings such as note and nevent for the raw hex ids used in threads.
• NIP-27 — inline references and mentions inside a note's content.
• NIP-65 — a user's write relays, useful for the outbox-model lookups described in §3.