Narratives
A narrative is a storyline: "the regulatory response", "the shell-company network", "the disinformation campaign around the election". Any node can belong to any number of narratives, membership doesn't require the nodes to sit near each other, and narratives can be related to one another. Narratives are how a board stops being a pile of facts and starts being an argument.
Anatomy
| Field | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Title, description | What the storyline is |
| Status | Active, Dormant, Resolved or Archived - where the thread stands |
| Summary | Prose overview, usually AI-generated |
| Key actors, key themes | Short lists surfaced on the narrative card |
| Members | Nodes in the narrative, each with a relevance: core, major, related or peripheral, and an optional role |
| Links | Relationships to other narratives (below) |
Creating and populating
- Context panel → Narratives section: type a title (and optional description) and press Enter. Click a narrative in the list to place it on the canvas as a Narrative node; hover for the delete button.
- Right-click a node → Add to narrative (or Remove from narrative). The menu lists existing narratives.
- Ask the assistant: "create a narrative called Funding trail and add every organization
and funds connection to it". Tools:
create_narrative,add_to_narrative,update_narrative,search_narratives,delete_narrative.
AI help
Three AI actions are built into the narrative workflow. All use your configured summarizer model, so they are cheap and fast.
- Suggest narratives (right-click a node): the AI reads the node against the board's existing narratives and proposes which it belongs to and why; apply a suggestion with one click.
- Generate summary (right-click a node that is in a narrative, or from the narrative card): writes the narrative's summary, key actors and key themes from its members.
- Analyze relationships (context panel → AI analysis): looks across all narratives and proposes narrative-to-narrative links - "Funding trail supports Capture of the regulator" - which you can apply or dismiss individually.
Narrative links
Narratives relate to each other with a second, smaller vocabulary:
| Link | Meaning | Drawn as |
|---|---|---|
| Related | Loosely associated | Purple dashed |
| Parent / Child | One storyline contains the other | Green (solid / dotted) |
| Supports | This narrative reinforces the other | Blue |
| Contradicts | The two accounts conflict | Red |
| Precedes / Follows | Sequence | Orange dashed |
| Parallel | Unfolding at the same time, independently | Cyan dotted |
Links are drawn between Narrative nodes when both are on the canvas. Create them with the
assistant (create_narrative_link) or by applying an Analyze relationships suggestion.
The Narrative node
Placing a narrative on the canvas gives it a card showing status, up to eight members, and key themes. The node is a view of the narrative: deleting it from the canvas leaves the narrative and its memberships intact. Collapse it like any node when you only want the label.
Narrative filter
The narrative filter in the bottom-left controls dims everything that is not a member of the chosen narrative, so you can read one storyline on a crowded board. It is a display filter only.
Narratives and the timeline
The timeline can filter by node type but not by narrative directly; combine the narrative filter on the canvas with the timeline to trace one thread over time.
Narratives and collaboration
Narratives, memberships and links are all synced to collaborators. Two people can add members to the same narrative at once; a member added and removed simultaneously resolves to whichever change was later. See History & conflicts.