Investigation Boards

Build persistent, visual research canvases — pin entities, documents, events, and more, draw connections between them, and share your investigation with the community.

What is an Investigation Board?

An Investigation Board is an infinite canvas where you can visually organize your research. Think of it as a corkboard for the entire library. You can pin any piece of data onto a board, draw lines to show how things connect, group cards into sections, and add your own notes.

Boards save automatically and are always waiting where you left off. You can keep them private or publish them to the community for others to read and fork.

Navigating the Canvas

The canvas is infinite — there's no size limit. You can pan in any direction and zoom freely.

• Pan (move around): Click and drag on any empty area of the canvas
• Zoom in / out: Scroll wheel up or down · Two-finger pinch on a trackpad
• Deselect everything: Click empty canvas space or press Esc

Adding Items to Your Board

Click + ADD ITEM in the top toolbar to open the item picker. Search for anything in the library and click a result to pin it to your board. Items appear near the center of your current view.

Item Types

Working with Cards

• Select: Click a card once. A highlight border appears to confirm selection.
• Open detail panel: Double-click a card — or hover the card and click the ⓘ icon. The detail panel opens on the right with full information.
• Move: Click and drag a card to reposition it. Dragging does not open the detail panel.
• Resize: Drag the small handle in the bottom-right corner of any card to make it wider or taller.
• Remove: Hover the card and click the × in the top-right corner, or select the card and press Delete.
• Edit a note: Double-click a Note card to enter editing mode and type your text.
• Deselect: Click empty canvas space or press Esc.

Selecting Multiple Cards

You can select several cards at once to move them together or use the alignment toolbar.

• Shift + click — Add or remove individual cards from the selection
• Shift + drag on empty canvas — Draw a rubber band selection box. All cards inside the box when you release are selected.
• Move the group: Click and drag any one of the selected cards. All selected cards move together.

Alignment Toolbar

When 2 or more cards are selected, the alignment toolbar appears at the top of the canvas.

• ALIGN: LEFT / RIGHT / TOP / BOTTOM — Snaps all selected cards so their edges line up
• CENTER: HORIZ / VERT — Centers all selected cards along a shared horizontal or vertical axis
• SPACING: HORIZ / VERT — Redistributes cards with equal gaps between them
• + SECTION — Wraps all selected cards in a new labeled section
• DESELECT — Clears the entire selection

Drawing Connections

Connections are labeled lines that link two cards to show relationships, evidence chains, or narrative flow.

Sections

Sections are labeled background regions that group related cards visually — useful for organizing by theme, timeframe, or actor.

• From multi-select: Select 2+ cards → click + SECTION in the alignment toolbar. A section wraps around all selected cards automatically.
• Draw manually: Click Draw Section in the left toolbar, then click and drag on empty canvas to define the area.
• Rename: Double-click a section label to edit the name inline.
• Move: Drag a section label to reposition the entire section. Cards inside move with it.
• Resize: Drag the bottom-right corner of the section border.
• Delete: Click a section to select it, then press Delete.

Saving

Boards save automatically every few seconds whenever a change is made. The save status is shown in the toolbar.

• Auto-save on — You're connected. Changes will save automatically.
• Saving… — A save is in progress.
• SAVE button — Click to force an immediate save at any time.
• Save failed — Check your connection and click SAVE to retry.

Sharing & Forking

Click SHARE in the toolbar to control who can see your board.

• Private (default): Only you can see and edit the board. It does not appear in the community.
• Public: Your board appears in the Community library. Anyone can read it and fork it. Forking creates a private copy that the other person can edit without affecting your original board.

To delete or re-privatize a public board you own, open the board and use the SHARE menu to set it back to Private, or delete it from your boards list.

Keyboard Shortcuts