MapCat is the small chat helper at the bottom-right. MapCat is an AI assistant: what you type to it is sent to an AI model. It needs AI switched on in your Account settings, but it does not need an AI subscription, and chatting with it does not use your AI credits. With AI switched off, MapCat stays at the bottom-right, greyed out, and its panel says how to switch AI on. Unless you switch on Edit my data with AI, it does not see your sources, quotes or factor labels: it sees the project's name, how many sources and links it has, the filters in use and which tabs are open.

What MapCat is for#

MapCat answers questions about the app and about causal mapping while you work. With Edit my data with AI on and a project open (AI plan), it also works alongside you: you can ask it to do things and it carries them out, showing a confirm step before any change.

Without that switch on (the default), you can:

• Ask how a control, panel or workflow works.
• Ask it to open help, highlight a control, or switch tab.
• Ask it to filter the map or choose which sources to show. A filter changes only what you are looking at, and MapCat is told how many links the view now holds, never what they say.
• Ask how to answer a question about your data. MapCat suggests a technique and sets up the view for it, then tells you what to look for, since it cannot read what the view holds.
• Read its nudge when the cat wiggles: it has a suggested next step.

With Edit my data with AI on and a project loaded, you can also:

• Ask questions about your own data: your factors, sources and links, or what a filtered view holds.
• Explore a question with it. Ask what your data says (the main outcomes, what leads to something, whether two groups tell different stories) and MapCat says which technique it will use, from the Garden's pages on answering questions, runs it, says how many sources the answer rests on, and suggests what to look at next. Where two techniques can disagree, such as counting by sources and by citations, it uses both. For an open question such as "what matters most?" it names two or three ways to take it, gives a first look, and asks which to follow.
• Set what you want to find out and let MapCat hold that aim across the chat.
• Run AI coding by chat. MapCat asks a couple of plain questions about how you want the sources coded, then starts the run for you, so you do not need the settings screen. It shows the conventions it chose in a coding-decisions summary before the run.
• Build a report. MapCat asks what it should cover, builds a slide deck, and can open it in a slideshow over the chat (see AI report deck).
• Ask about your findings, and MapCat answers by running a report view and telling you what it shows.
• Change map, filter and pivot settings, and edit links and sources, by asking.
• Have MapCat build a view and save it as a bookmark for you, so you can ask for a set of maps in one go and come back to each one later.
• Ask it to reopen a saved bookmark, change something about it and save it back, so a set of views can be corrected without rebuilding each one by hand.

Every change shows a confirm step first, so nothing happens to your project until you approve it.

Header controls (top of MapCat panel)#

• Window controls (group of 3 icons):
  • Maximize icon: open MapCat in large centered mode.
  • Restore icon: dock MapCat in the normal bottom-right position.
  • Minus icon: minimize back to the cat chat-head button.

Footer controls (bottom of MapCat panel)#

• Contact support: sends the latest question/answer context to support.
• Edit my data with AI (AI plan only). The switch was called Superpowers until August 2026; the name changed because ticking it is your consent to send this project's data to the AI, and the old name said nothing about that.
  • Default is OFF (safe mode).
  • When OFF, MapCat can still answer documentation questions, use non-data UI helpers (for example help/hints/tab switching), and filter the view or choose sources, since those change only what you see and tell MapCat only link counts.
  • When ON, MapCat can run data-aware actions (for example reading your factors and sources, pivot config, editing links), which means project state data is sent to the AI. It can also change your project, and every change asks you to confirm first.
• Clear: clears MapCat chat history.
• Send: sends the current prompt.

Privacy and data-sharing behavior#

• With Edit my data with AI OFF (default), MapCat runs in safe mode intended for users who do not want project data sent for AI actions.
• With Edit my data with AI ON, MapCat may send project-derived context needed to execute data-aware requests (such as source IDs, filtered link/factor context, and related view state) to the AI service.

Safety rules#

• UI actions are whitelist-only.
• Project deletion actions are explicitly blocked (delete/remove/destroy/drop project) even if requested by a tool directive.