Blocking tasks are confusing

[Dual1r]

I dont know if this idea / question was risen before since i got to scroll down just a couple of first pages and search keywords like "block, blocked and sub-tasks" but the whole idea about tasks being blocked by another task / blocking another task is great but!

I fell a little bit confused about how relationships work if one task is blocked by another one?

So blocked task has "Blocked by" property which means that i can filter them if want. Yet for some reason task that blocks something doesn't have "Blocking" property but instead it stores blocked task as a relationship to a project inside "Projects" property for some reason?

Isnt it more logical to have both "Blocking" and *"Blocked by"*properties be filled automatically in a respective tasks rather than use project relationship?

[callumalpass]

Thanks for raising this—the distinction could be clearer, and the documentation contributes to the confusion.

TaskNotes stores dependencies in blockedBy and calculates the reverse “Blocking” relationship from that. For example, if Task B is blocked by Task A, B stores the reference to A, and TaskNotes can show that A blocks B without storing a second property on A. That avoids maintaining two copies of the same relationship.

projects is separate: it represents project/subtask membership, not dependencies. A blocking relationship shouldn’t require adding either task to the other’s projects property.

For viewing the reverse relationship, the Relationships widget includes a Blocking view that finds dependent tasks through Bases, without needing a stored blocking property.

The documentation currently says the upstream note’s blocking list gets updated, which misleadingly suggests it is written to frontmatter. That wording should be corrected to distinguish the stored dependency from the calculated reverse relationship.

[Dani-8]

@callumalpass Thanks for the clear explanation! That distinction makes total sense—storing the dependency purely in blockedBy keeps frontmatter clean and prevents sync conflicts from two-way property writes.

Updating the documentation to clarify that "Blocking" is a dynamically calculated relationship (rather than a stored frontmatter property like projects) will definitely clear up confusion for anyone setting up custom Dataview queries or filtering dependent tasks. Appreciate the clarification!