The collective braindump (editing)

The braindump is the editing mode of a map — a canvas where you add nodes, draw connections between them, and arrange everything by hand. It’s well suited to workshop-scale maps (roughly 20–200 nodes).

The editor

Opening a map shows the canvas with a sidebar on the left and a floating toolbar over the canvas:

The sidebar has three tabs — Nodes, Connections, and Fields. Nodes and Connections list everything on the map; selecting a node or connection on the canvas switches to its tab and shows a detail panel there instead of the list. The Fields tab manages the field definitions available to this map’s organisation (see below). Click the close icon (or the empty canvas) to go back to a list. Collapse the sidebar with the panel toggle at the bottom of the icon rail.
The Nodes tab splits into Placed and Unplaced sections, each collapsible and paginated (200 per page — see placed and unplaced nodes below).
The toolbar has Add Node (click, then click the canvas to place it) and Neaten, which snaps every node to a grid to tidy up a messy layout.

Selecting a node highlights its direct neighbours and their connections so you can trace a relationship at a glance; everything else fades to a plain dashed line.

Placed and unplaced nodes

Every node on a map is either placed (has a position on the canvas) or unplaced (belongs to the map but hasn’t been given a position yet). Nodes you create by hand are placed immediately; nodes brought in by import land in the Unplaced list instead, so a bulk import of hundreds or thousands of nodes doesn’t dump them all on top of each other — you can work through them at your own pace, or leave them unplaced and use visualisation instead.

Place a node by dragging it from the Unplaced list onto the canvas, or by clicking it — the tool picks a sensible spot near your existing nodes automatically.
Place all places every unplaced node at once, laid out in a tidy grid. It’s disabled once the unplaced list (or the resulting total once placed) would exceed the 200-node edit limit — place or remove some nodes first.
Remove a node from the map without deleting it (unplace it): right-click it — on the canvas or in the Placed list — and choose Remove from map. It reappears in the Unplaced list; its connections and data are kept.
Remove all unplaces every placed node at once — the reverse of Place all.
Clicking a node in the Placed list opens its detail panel, exactly like clicking it on the canvas — it never deletes or unplaces the node. Opening a node’s detail panel also pans and zooms the canvas to bring that node into view.

What you can do

Add a node by placing it on the canvas and giving it a label. A new node opens its detail panel with the label field focused.
Move nodes by dragging — positions you set are saved per map.
Connect nodes by dragging from one of a node’s four handles to another node. A node can’t connect to itself; drawing is instant and doesn’t force you to pick a type up front, so a fresh connection is dashed and flagged as needs defining until you give it a reason or a field value. Any number of connections can exist between the same pair of nodes — each observing a different field — and they always fan out into separate curved lines so each one stays visible and clickable.
Grow the map from a handle — click and release a handle (no dragging) to create a new connected node right next to it, or drag out from a handle and release on empty canvas to create the new node where you let go. Either way you get a fresh node joined by a needs defining connection, ready to label and define.
Edit a connection by clicking its line or its label — either opens its detail panel with a Note / Value switch. Note writes a freeform Reason (“why are these connected?”) — zero setup, no field required. Value assigns a Field and its value (a number field or a true/false toggle depending on the field’s type); the panel remembers the last field you picked this session, so assigning the same field to a batch of connections only takes one pick. A connection can carry both a reason and a field. Direction isn’t something you set per connection — it comes from the assigned field itself, and the panel shows the resulting reading in plain language (e.g. “Alice funds Bob”) along with a note to change it on the field definition. Direction is shown as an arrow on the connection line; the connection’s colour and line style reflect whether it’s reason-only, numeric, or true/false. The two nodes it joins are shown as a pair of clickable buttons — click either to jump to that node. If a connection was drawn the wrong way round, use Swap below them to flip which node is which — that’s the only way to correct it now that direction always follows source → target. A small “Show in-use fields” link under the field picker takes you back to the Connections list. An Add another connection button below draws a second (undefined) connection between the same two nodes and opens it for defining — a shortcut to adding more connections between a pair without drawing a new line on the canvas.
Edit a node’s properties — its label plus any number of freeform name/value properties — from its detail panel. The same panel has a Fields section for assigning node fields: pick one from the dropdown to add it with a default value, edit its value inline, or remove it; a New field button lets you define one on the spot without leaving the panel. A node’s Connections are also listed there, each split into two clickable parts — the connection’s field on the left (jumps to its edit panel) and the other node on the right (jumps straight to it).
Delete nodes and connections from their detail panel, or with Delete/Backspace once a node or connection is selected. Deleting a node removes its connections on this map.
Manage fields from the Fields tab: add a field (name, whether it applies to nodes or connections, its value type, and an optional category and description), or edit/delete one your organisation defined. Fields are grouped into Nodes and Connections sections by what they apply to. A connection field also has a direction — undirected, directed, or mutual; a directed field shows a live preview (e.g. “[Node A] funds [Node B]”) and takes an optional inverse name (e.g. “funded by”) for the reverse reading. System-defined fields are shared across organisations and can’t be edited or deleted here. If a field is already in use, changing its value type or deleting it asks for confirmation first — deleting a field removes the node values that used it and un-defines (rather than removes) any connections that used it (unless they also carry a reason, in which case they stay defined). The Connections tab’s list only shows fields with at least one connection on this map; right-click one to hide its connections from the canvas or remove them all (also confirmation-gated). Reason-only connections are listed individually under Reason only; true placeholders — no field, no reason — are listed individually under Needs defining, both named after the nodes they join (e.g. “Alice - Bob”).

Undo, redo, and recovery

Your edits are tracked as a session behind the scenes today — every change you make is recorded — but undo/redo, the idle-recovery window, and collapsing a session into a restorable revision are coming with revision history, not yet available.