When Pandoc creates a standalone document, it uses a template for the output. A template is essentially a document with some placeholder variables, where metadata and your processed Markdown text will be inserted. Which metadata will be used in a template depends on the output format; you can get a full list of variables for your output in the Pandoc manual.1 Pandoc automatically sets some metadata, described in the manual, but you can specify other metadata in the header.
Unless you specify another template explicitly, Pandoc will use a default for the output format. You can get Pandoc ...
