Tracecat uses YAML to define action inputs and workflow configurations. This cheatsheet covers the basic YAML syntax, block modifiers to handle multi-line text, and special characters.

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Basic Syntax

# Key-value pairs
key: value
nested:
  key: value

# Lists
items:
  - item1
  - item2
  - item3

# YAML also supports inline JSON and lists
key: {"key": "value"}
key: [item1, item2, item3]

# Strings and numbers
integer: 42
float: 3.14
string: "42"

# Boolean values
enabled: true
disabled: false

# Null value
empty: null

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Special Characters

YAML supports escaping characters using backslashes:

key: "This is a \"string\" with a quote"

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Block Modifiers

The best way to deal with multi-line configurations and special characters in YAML is to use the block scalars | and |-. | preserves all trailing newlines, while |- removes all trailing newlines.

Only use > when you want to convert newlines to spaces: i.e. when you want to make a long single-line string more readable.

Trailing newlines are the newlines at the end of the block. Newlines are represented as \n in YAML.

# Literal Block Scalar (|): Preserves all newlines
description: |
  This is a multi-line description.
  Each line break is preserved exactly as written.
  Indentation is respected.

# |- : Strip all trailing newlines
notes: |-
  This text will have
  all trailing newlines removed.

  This is a multi-line description.
  Each line break is preserved exactly as written.
  Indentation is respected.

# Folded Block Scalar (>): Converts newlines to spaces
description: >
  This is a multi-line description.
  Line breaks become spaces.

  Blank lines start new paragraphs.

# >- : Folded style with trailing newlines removed
description: >-
  This is a long description
  that spans multiple lines
  but will be rendered as a single line
  with trailing newlines removed.