Map Controls #

• 👉🏼 Jump to factor (type-to-search dropdown): quickly find and select factors on the map (supports multiple selections).
• 👉🏼 Refresh layout (button): reset the map layout after zooming/moving.
• 👉🏼 Copy image to clipboard (button): copy a high-quality map image for reports/slides.
• 👉🏼 Copy legend (button): copy the map legend text.
• 👉🏼 Zoom in/out (controls): zoom the map view.
• 👉🏼 Double-click (gesture): zoom in to that point on the background.

Map Legend #

Discrete text legend showing:

• projectname and included sources
• Citation coverage percentage
• Visual encoding explanations (link sizes, colors, numbers)
• Applied filters summary
• 💡Tip: Click Copy legend to copy this text to clipboard.
• You can drag the legend box to reposition it on the map.

Map Formatting #

Customisable formatting (Things you can tweak)#

Layout and interaction

• 👉🏼 Layout (dropdown): choose how the map is laid out.
• Interactive and most other layouts are good while you are conducting your research (fast + supports the interactive features).
• Print/Graphviz is best for static images (reports/journal articles). In Graphviz SVG you can still pan/zoom (mouse wheel, double-click, Shift+double-click).
• 👉🏼 Groups (switch): layout maps with top-level factors as boxes which group together their "children".
• 👉🏼 Initials (dropdown): add distinctive coloured badges to factor labels in Interactive and Print layouts. Choose which part of the label is used for the badge: Off / Full label / Level 1 (;) / First colon (:) / Square brackets [] / Round brackets (). Uses the same extraction rules as Groups. In Print layout, badges use a gradient for visual distinctiveness.
• 👉🏼 Direction (dropdown): LR (default), TB, or BT (for Interactive and Print/Graphviz layouts).
• 👉🏼 Link direction (dropdown): Normal (directed arrows) vs Undirected (dots at both ends).
• In Undirected mode, dots use the same colours as arrowheads (including sentiment colouring). When sentiment is neutral (0), they use Link Colour.
• Note: when the Combine Opposites filter is active, tail/head can still have different colours.

Factors

• 👉🏼 Factor labels (dropdown): what to show next to each factor (same data as the Factors Panel).
• Source count (default) / Citation count / Sentiment (mean incoming) / None
• 👉🏼 Factor colours (dropdown): Outcomeness (default) / Source count / Citation count / None
• 👉🏼 Factor sizes (dropdown): Citation count (default) / Source count / None

Links

• 👉🏼 Link labels (dropdown): what to show on each link.
• Source count (default) / Citation count / Sentiment / Label by Group / Unique Sources / All Sources / Unique Tags / Unique Tags (Tally) / All Tags / None
• 👉🏼 Link widths (dropdown): Citation count (default) / Source count / None
• 👉🏼 Link label font size (control): change link label font sizes.
• 👉🏼 Arrowhead size (control): scale arrowhead size (Interactive + Print/Graphviz). Default 100% keeps current appearance.
• 👉🏼 Link colour (colour picker): sets the default link line colour (Interactive + Print/Graphviz). When sentiment is neutral (0), this colour is also used for arrowheads and node borders.
• 👉🏼 Links highlight (dropdown): optional extra highlighting without changing the base colour scheme.
• Off (default)
• Reverse (backwards/same-rank in current layout direction)
• Significant (when Label by Group shows ⬆/⬇)
• Feedback loop (2 / ≤3 / ≤4 factors)
• Feedback loop + reverse (combine the above)

Other

• 👉🏼 Show self-loops (toggle, default on): show/hide A→A links on the map.

Fixed visual appearance (things you can't tweak)#

Some parts of the map’s appearance are automatic (i.e. they are not controlled by the Map Formatting widgets above):

Link geometry (bundling):

• Links are bundled and drawn as curved edges for readability.

Automatic colouring overlays:

• Arrowhead colours reflect mean sentiment for that link bundle (neutral uses your chosen Link colour).
• When the Combine Opposites filter is active, arrowhead colours instead reflect flipped share (tail=cause, head=effect).

Automatic highlighting:

• Factors that match filters like Factor Label or Path Tracing show dashed coloured borders.
• Factor border colour reflects mean incoming edge sentiment (but when Combine Opposites is active: average flipped share, blue→red).

Interactive Features#

These work for all layouts except Print/Graphviz layout (which is mostly for static export, but does support clicking nodes/links now).

• Drag factors to temporarily reposition them
• Drag factor to factor to create new links
• Shift+drag for box selection of multiple factors (opens edit modal)
• Ctrl+drag for box selection of multiple factors (direct selection, no modal)
• Click a link to edit.
• Click a factor to edit; shift-click or ctrl-click to add to selection without opening modal.

Editing and deleting (multiple) factors#

• Select factor(s) by clicking a factor, shift-click or ctrl-click to add more, or shift+drag/ctrl+drag a box around multiple factors, then:
• Move selected factors together
• Delete matching factors everywhere or in current view only
• Rename matching factors everywhere or in current view only

What does "everywhere or in current view only" mean?

• everywhere: all links containing factors with exactly the selected labels will be deleted
• in current view only: all links containing factors with exactly the selected labels (and matching the current filters, i.e. those you can see in the current map) will be deleted

💡Tip: By control-clicking or shift-clicking multiple factors you can easily rename several at once, e.g. you can merge multiple factors as a single factor.

Grid layout#

Factors containing a tag of the form (N.M) or (N,M) anywhere in the label (where N and M are integers) are positioned on a grid layout. The grid coordinate tags are automatically stripped from displayed labels. Grid tags can also be partial: (N,), (,M), [N,M], [N,], [,M] (same meaning; first number = rank direction, second = perpendicular).

Grid layout toggle: Enable/disable grid layout in Map Formatting. Defaults to enabled. Disabled automatically when no grid tags are present.

Interactive Layout:

• Grid-tagged factors are positioned at their grid coordinates and locked in place
• Other factors with no grid tag are positioned freely within the grid bounds
• Grid bounds: from smallest x -1 to largest x +1, and smallest y -1 to largest y +1

Print/Graphviz Layout:

• Grid-tagged factors anchor the initial and final ranks:
• Factors with minimum rank coordinate (first number) are anchored at rank=min (initial rank)
• Factors with maximum rank coordinate are anchored at rank=max (final rank)
• This improves layout stability while allowing Graphviz to position other nodes optimally
• Grid coordinate tags are stripped from labels in the output
• The perpendicular coordinate (second number) is not an absolute y-position in Graphviz; it is only used as a best-effort ordering hint within a fixed rank (so y-only tags like (,M) cannot be enforced unless the rank coordinate is also specified).

Grid coordinates respect layout direction:

• First number (N) always maps to the rank direction (main flow direction)
• Second number (M) always maps to the perpendicular direction
• BT (Bottom-Top): First number = y (rank), y starts at bottom (flip y), second = x
• TB (Top-Bottom): First number = y (rank), y starts at top (normal), second = x
• LR (Left-Right): First number = x (rank), x starts at left (normal), second = y, y starts at top
• RL (Right-Left): First number = x (rank), x starts at right (flip x), second = y, y starts at top

Vignettes #

How to use:

1. Select your model and region settings
2. (Optional) Leave Enable checking (second AI pass) on to have a checker review and correct the vignette, with its notes shown in a collapsed panel.
3. Choose Whole Map or Typical Source
4. Enter or edit your prompt (use the navigation buttons to browse previous prompts)
5. Click Write Vignette to generate

Tip (optional): tell the AI which links matter most

• If you want the vignette to focus on particular connections, go to Map Formatting → Links highlight and choose Significant or Feedback loop.
• When you click Write Vignette, the app will include a small list of those highlighted links in the data sent to the AI (so it can focus on them).
• If Links highlight is Off (or set to Reverse), or if no links end up highlighted, nothing extra is sent.

Whole Map: Creates a summary of all relationships in your current map view. the app provides the following data which is appended to the prompt:

• The overall map (same as you can see) including factor frequencies and bundled causal links with average sentiment
• Up to 30 "typical sources" that tell the most common stories within the current map, with their quotes and metadata including source ID, Title and Filename.

Typical Source: Focuses on the single most representative source, showing individual links with quotes and sentiment.

Output format: Results are displayed as markdown with support for:

• Headers, bold, italic text
• Bulleted and numbered lists
• Callouts/quotes (using >)
• Code blocks

You can edit your prompt to change the tone, audience, or focus before generating. See the tips on using prompt history for more details.

Bookmarking & restore:

• Each time you click Write Vignette, the app automatically saves a bookmark for the current view (description: Vignette (whole|typical): <your prompt>), and appends the bookmark link at the bottom of the vignette.
• The bookmark footer prints the model name used.
• Vignette settings are saved into the URL state, so bookmarks restore them (model, region, thinking settings, checking toggle, and prompts).