Exploring the Brain graph

The Brain card on your Overview shows the graph in miniature. Click Explore on that card and it opens full screen, where it stops being a picture and becomes something you can actually use.

Reading the graph

Every dot is one thing the Brain knows. Every line is a connection it has drawn between two of them.

• Colour is the type of thing it is. The key along the bottom lists the types present in your Brain: Goal, Rule, Decision, Fact, Lesson, Theory, Detail, Moment, Milestone and Note.
• Size reflects how connected something is. The bigger a dot, the more the rest of your Brain hangs off it.
• A white ring marks a key fact: something treated as settled. Key facts are used in every answer the Brain gives, and nothing changes or removes them automatically.

Dots sitting alone around the edge are things nothing else links to yet. They connect up as the Brain learns more around them.

Moving around

• Scroll (or pinch on a phone) to zoom, drag to move.
• Names appear as you zoom in. Zoomed out you see shape and colour on purpose: at a distance the labels would cover the very thing you are trying to look at. Hovering a dot always names it, whatever the zoom.
• Click a dot to open it. Double-click to re-centre the whole graph on just that thing and what it connects to, which is the easiest way to follow a thread. Breadcrumbs across the top take you back.
• Fit re-frames everything in view.

Finding something

The search box has two modes, and they answer different questions.

• Names looks for your words in the text, the way any search box does. Use it when you know roughly what the entry says.
• Meaning searches by what things are about. Ask something like why are we not getting enough leads and it lights up the part of your Brain that bears on it, even where none of those words appear. This is the one to reach for when you do not know what you are looking for.

Matches stay bright and everything else dims, so you can see where the answer sits inside the whole picture rather than just getting a list.

Filtering

Filters narrows by type, where something came from, how sure the Brain is, key facts, and unconnected items. Filters dim rather than hide, again so the shape of your Brain stays put while you look.

Search and filters combine. If nothing matches both, the panel says so rather than leaving you with a graph that has gone dark for no obvious reason.

Travelling back in time

Click History and a slider appears. Drag it, or press play, and you can watch your Brain fill in from the day it started. The read-out tells you the date and how much it knew at that point.

Things move as well as appear: it is normal for the count to peak and then come down, because the Brain merges duplicates and retires facts that have stopped being true. Nothing is moving on screen - the layout stays exactly where it is - so you can watch one corner fill in without losing your place.

Fixing what it has wrong

Open anything and you can tell the Brain it is off. This matters: it reads its own memory before writing a report, a recommendation or a draft, so a wrong entry does not stay a small problem.

• That's right confirms it. The Brain leans on it more, and you will see its confidence go up straight away.
• This isn't right lets you rewrite it in your own words. Yours replaces ours everywhere from that point on. Nothing is lost - the earlier version is kept and your team can see exactly what changed.
• Add context attaches extra colour without contradicting anything. The Brain reads it and often turns it into something it knows.
• Remove this takes the entry out of use entirely, for when something is simply noise and there is no right version to write. It stops being used anywhere, but it is not destroyed, so your team can put it back if it turns out to matter.

Sharing what you find

The address bar updates as you click, so the link to whatever you have open is a link to that exact entry. Copy it and send it to your team and they will land on the same thing.

Related: What we know about you lays the same knowledge out as a readable page rather than a graph, and Brain questions & feedback covers the questions the Brain asks you directly.