Course outline
AcademyModule 3 · Inspect and classify entities
Inspect entity profiles and sources
What you'll learn
- You can open any entity's 360° page from the table, search, chat links, other profiles, or a case
- You can read the header at a glance: note count, first-observed date, type badge, description, and AI summary
- You can check any connection against the exact sentence in your notes, then retract a wrong one for good
- You can split a bad alias merge and hand the entity off to the graph canvas or a case file
To understand Meridian, mentioned across meeting notes and budget drafts, you need to inspect the related sources and connections together.
The entity 360° page brings its types, AI summary, sourced connections, aliases, and notes into one tab. Learn to read the profile and continue exploring in the graph or a case.
Six ways to open an entity profile
- Click any row in the entity table (the tab titled "Entities").
- Click a connection chip on another entity's page. Profiles chain right into each other.
- Click an entity result under "Concepts" in global search (⌘⇧F).
- Click an entity reference in a chat answer.
- Click a new-entity chip on the "While you were away" digest card on the graph canvas.
- Click a pinned entity chip inside a Case file (a container for one investigation).
Profiles are ordinary tabs, so you can line several up side by side. Reopen the same entity and it just focuses the tab you already have. Pages dedupe by normalized label, and every alias resolves to the same canonical entity: open "Bob Smith" or "Robert Smith" and you land on one page.
Reading the header
| Element | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| "Appears in {n} notes" | The note count across the whole merge cluster, every spelling folded into this one entity. It's this entity's footprint in your workspace. |
| "First observed about {n} days ago" | When the change ledger, the app's running record of graph changes, first saw the entity. Older entities read "Observed before change tracking began". |
| Type badge (colored pill) | One of the 11 entity kinds. Click it to set your own. An untyped entity shows a dashed "Set type…" pill instead of guessing. |
| Description | A one-line description the extractor pulled from your notes, when it caught one. |
| One-line summary | One AI-written sentence that sums the entity up. It reads "Summarizing…" while it generates. |
Sometimes you'll see two badges
The badge summarizes what your notes called this entity, so when notes disagree you can see two badges at once. That is deliberate. How the badge gets picked, and why ties stay visible, is the next lesson's subject.
- 360° page
- The full-tab profile of one entity: kind, summary, connections, aliases, and source notes in one place.
- merge cluster
- Near-duplicate labels that entity resolution folded into one entity. The other spellings show up under "Also known as".
- source sentence
- The exact sentence in your note that states a relation, shown when you hover a connection chip.
- retraction
- A wrong edge removed for good, recorded so re-extraction can't bring it back.
- first observed
- When the change ledger first recorded the entity, i.e. the first time it was seen. That can fall long after the file was created.
Connections and their sources
The "Connections" section groups neighbors by direction and relation: a caption like → founded or ← broader, then one chip per neighbor. Once the full profile loads, each group ranks its neighbors by how central they are, so the ones that matter most rise to the top. A group shows up to 6 chips, then "more…", and clicking a chip opens that entity's page.
Hover any chip and it fetches the source sentence. The tooltip shows "Reading the note…", then the exact sentence in quotes with a caption like "{note title} · line {n}".
It matches against each note's current text, never a stale copy from extraction day. The quote you see is the sentence that stands in your workspace right now. If the note changed and no sentence states the relation anymore, the tooltip says it couldn't find one.
Where every fact comes from
Every fact lives under the note that asserted it, a design you met in the extraction lesson. That answers "which note said this?", and the source sentence carries the answer down to the exact line. A knowledge base that can't answer "says who?" is just confident noise. Here the answer stays one hover away.
Retract a wrong connection
- Hover the chip
An unlink icon appears on the connection chip. Its tooltip flags the connection as wrong and offers to remove it.
- Confirm inline
Click the icon. The chip turns into an inline confirm: "Remove this connection?", with a Remove and a Cancel button.
- Remove for good
Click Remove. The edge is retracted and the profile refreshes. The retraction is on the record, so re-extraction won't bring the edge back.
Aliases, source notes, and related code
- "Also known as" lists the merge cluster's other spellings as alias pills. Each one has an unlink button, tooltip "Not the same as {name}? Split them apart", that rejects the merge and rebuilds entity resolution.
- "Found in" shows up to 8 notes that mention the entity. Click one to open it in the editor.
- "Related code" shows up only when the code index and AI code features are on. It lists up to 8 source-code symbols that relate to the entity in meaning, and each one opens its file.
- "In your words" appears when statement extraction has captured your own decisions, questions, and claims about this entity, word for word. The statements lesson covers it in depth.
Open the graph or a case from a profile
Two header actions turn a profile into a starting point. "Open on the graph" jumps to the graph canvas with this entity's node in isolation. It's the same knowledge, drawn as a picture.
"Add to case" opens a menu. "New case from this entity" creates a case named after the entity and opens it. Pick an existing case instead and the entity is pinned there, with an "Added {label} to the case" toast to confirm.
Audit your most-mentioned entity
- Press ⌘⇧L (Ctrl+Shift+L on Windows/Linux) to open the entity table. It opens on "All entities", sorted by Notes descending.
- Click the top row, your most-mentioned entity, to open its 360° page.
- Read the "Connections" groups, then hover one chip and wait for the source sentence.
- If a connection is wrong, click the unlink icon and confirm "Remove this connection?".
The tooltip shows the exact sentence from your note that states the relation, with the note title and line number.
Every edit here is reversible
Split an alias or removed an edge and want it back? Re-toggle any merge under Knowledge graph tuning ▸ Synonyms, and shape typed relations under ▸ Relationships. You catch a mistake on the profile and take it back in the tuning panels.
The type badge you clicked in the header gets the next lesson to itself: the 11 entity kinds and the collections they unlock.