Course outline
AcademyModule 8 · Source collection and practical workflows
From investigation sources to a cited report
What you'll learn
- you can run the full investigation pipeline: ingest sources, let entities emerge, and open a case around one driving question
- you can grow a case's pinned network from entity pages and project it onto the graph canvas and the entity table
- you can put an investigation's places on a live map and pivot from a map pin back into the knowledge graph
- you can record claims and evidence as verbatim statements and let later notes supersede earlier conclusions
- you can produce a write-up where every fact links back to its source note, then catch up on new evidence when you return
Suppose you are reviewing a three-year contract with supplier Taeyang Components. You need to examine audit PDFs, two years of meeting notes, news articles, an Ulsan factory address, and information about upstream ownership.
This lesson takes you from source import through entity review, case organization, mapping, recording claims and evidence, and writing a cited report. It combines the features you have learned into a repeatable investigation.
Stage 1: import sources and extract entities
Every investigation starts as a document dump. Resist the urge to organize first. Drop the material into your workspace and let extraction do the sorting. As each note is saved, background extraction reads it, and the people, organizations, and places inside become entities in the knowledge graph. No tagging, no folder taxonomy. If you've got a pile of untouched documents, the activity center offers the bulk route: "Build this workspace's knowledge graph?" with a "Build" button.
- Files you already have. Drop them in the workspace and let per-note extraction (or the bulk offer) build the graph from them.
- The open web. Type
/researchfollowed by your topic, or press ⌘⇧R. Deep research scopes the question, fans out searches, and writes one document per source into aresearch/folder, where they get extracted into the graph like any other note. - One-off context. Chat attachments (paperclip, drag-drop, paste) feed a single conversation, but the graph only grows from what lives in the workspace. If a document matters to the investigation, it belongs inside.
Let the graph finish before you interrogate it
If you send a chat message while a bulk build is still running, a dialog warns "Knowledge graph still building" and shows the progress ("{done} of {total} notes extracted so far"). Pick "Send when extraction finishes". Your message waits in a strip and fires the moment the build settles, so the answer stands on all your sources. The gate asks at most once per build.
Stage 2: ask questions and pin the chat as a case
Open the first interrogation. Start a "New chat" (⌘⇧C), ask broad questions, and @-mention the key entities so their live profiles ride along. Watch the answers as they come. Every workspace search draws the mini graph "Where this came from in your notes", and [[bracketed]] references are clickable doors into the underlying notes and entity pages. Once the conversation has touched the right people and organizations, it has quietly built your starting entity set. Now freeze it.
From conversation to case
- Interrogate
Ask your opening questions in a fresh chat, @-mentioning the central entities ("@Taeyang Components", "@Pacific Alloys"). The assistant's citations do half the pinning work for you.
- Pin it
In the sidebar session list, right-click the chat (or click its "…" button) and choose "Pin as case…".
- Read the toast
The toast confirms it: "Pinned to a new case" with an entity count. Every knowledge-graph entity the transcript touched is now pinned, the chat is adopted into the case, and the case opens.
- Frame it
Rename the case in the inline "Case name" field, then type the driving question into "What is this case about?".
- Start the log
Write your first finding into the "Investigation log". It's for your running notes and findings, saves when you click away, and keeps accumulating across sessions.
Pin-time extraction is deterministic, with no AI involved. The app reads what the transcript already carries: your @-mention tokens and the assistant's [[…]] citations. It resolves each label against the live knowledge graph and drops anything that isn't an entity node (a citation to a plain note, say). Aliases then collapse onto one chip by identity.
A driving question worth the name
Weak: "supplier research". Strong: "Is Taeyang Components a partner we can rely on for a three-year contract?" A good driving question names its entities, hides a yes/no answer inside, and tells you what evidence would settle it. Everything else in the case falls out of that one sentence: which entities deserve a pin, which claims need a source.
- Case
- The investigation container: one driving question, pinned entities, adopted conversations, and a log.
- Driving question
- Free text under "What is this case about?". Everything else falls out of it.
- Pinned entity
- A graph entity frozen into the case by identity, labelled as it read at pin time.
- Adopted conversation
- A chat that belongs to the case. Adoption is a pointer, so the chat stays in your history.
- Investigation log
- The case's running notes. Saves when you click away, accumulates across sessions.
- New-evidence delta
- The reopen check listing which pinned entities gained evidence since your last visit.
Stage 3: grow the network, one connection at a time
Now work the network: click any pinned chip to open that entity's page. Its connections arrive ranked, with direction arrows and plain-language relations, and hovering any neighbor shows the exact sentence in your notes that states the fact. A wrong edge dies here too. A hidden unlink button ("This connection is wrong") writes a permanent retraction that re-extraction can't resurrect.
When a neighbor turns out to matter, say the audit firm or the rival bidder, its own page has "Add to case" in the header (toast: "Added {label} to the case"). Investigations grow exactly like this: hop a link, check the source sentence, pin what survives.
| Case button | What it does | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| "Continue in this case" | Opens a fresh chat, adopts it into the case, and pre-fills the composer with every pinned entity as an @-mention, so their live profiles enter the context. | Always enabled. The mentions are real chips, so delete any before sending. |
| "Show on canvas" | Projects exactly the pinned set onto the 3D graph canvas as an isolation set, colored by type. | Disabled until at least one entity is pinned. |
| "Open as table" | Opens the entity table scoped to the case, with Name / Type / Connections / Notes columns plus filter and sort. | Disabled until at least one entity is pinned. |
Objects, links, properties: the analyst's loop
Professional link-analysis platforms, from the police evidence wall to today's intelligence-grade ontology tools, share one working rhythm. Model the world as objects with properties, connect them with typed links, then investigate by hopping links and asking for a source at each step. A case here is that same rhythm at personal scale. Pinned entities are the objects, graph relations (each backed by its source sentence) are the links, and the case itself is a saved viewpoint: a projection over the one graph. That's why deleting a case destroys nothing but the viewpoint.
Stage 4: put the places on a map
Geography is evidence. There's no map button anywhere. You ask: "map every facility connected to this case". The agent geocodes each place (the "Geocoding places" card), authors the map (the "Authored map" card), and a live, interactive map appears right in the transcript. Click "View large" to open it as a full tab, with a legend and basemap styles. The chat docks into the left sidebar so you can keep directing: "add the ports", "color facilities by owner".
The map talks back. Click a mark and a pill reads "Selected: {label}" while an @label mention chip lands in the composer. Your next message carries that exact feature's data, so "why is this one isolated?" works out of the box. Marks tied to your entities offer "View in graph", jumping from map to graph in one click. Best of all, entity coordinates live in a dedicated geo layer of the knowledge graph that survives re-extraction. Weeks later, with no map open, you can ask "what's within 2 km of the Ulsan plant?" and get a real answer, or have the agent compute actual routes and travel-time areas.
Stage 5: record claims and evidence in your own words
Findings that stay in your head, or in the plain-text log, never become evidence. Write them as notes. With "Capture your decisions and questions" on (it's the default), extraction lifts your unhedged sentences verbatim as statements: decisions, open questions, claims, and quotes, plus standing preferences, values, and stances.
When your text explicitly connects two statements, the extraction records that link too. Sentences like "this supports the decision above" or "this rebuts the capacity claim" do it. Rationale links are author-explicit: only the connections you write get captured, so your reasoning stays exactly as you put it.
# Taeyang assessment, 2026-03-02
Decision: we will shortlist Taeyang Components
for the three-year contract.
The 2025 audit's 98% on-time delivery rate
supports this decision.
Claim: the Ulsan plant is running near capacity.
Open question: who owns Pacific Alloys,
Taeyang's main upstream supplier?Each statement shows up under "In your words" on the entity pages it concerns, and its status is derived, never stored. When a later note revises an earlier decision ("2026-05-10: we are dropping Taeyang from the shortlist"), cross-note supersession proposes the link. High-confidence proposals auto-apply (always reversible); the rest wait in the Revisions panel for your "Confirm" or "Reject". Once confirmed, the earlier decision renders struck through everywhere with a "Superseded by {note}" link. Ordering uses the date the note itself states, so date your analysis notes and they slot into the revision timeline on their own.
Stage 6: a cited report and follow-up investigation
Time to deliver: in the case, click "Continue in this case". A fresh chat opens, already adopted, with every pinned entity pre-seeded as a real @-mention chip (delete any that don't belong). Ask for the deliverable: "Write a one-page assessment answering the driving question. Cite every fact to its source note." The draft arrives with [[citations]] you can click.
In the default "Ask" permission mode, the note the agent writes shows its full diff with an approval card before a single byte lands in your workspace. Verify the load-bearing claims the way you verified the network: hover the connection, read the source sentence.
Then comes the part scattered chats can never give you: the return. Weeks later, press ⌘⇧K and open the case. If any pinned entity gained new graph evidence while you were away, a strip announces it: "New evidence on {count} pinned entities since your last visit:" followed by exactly which ones. That's your catch-up list. Dismiss it with ✕ when you're caught up (dismissal lasts for the session), add a line to the log, and the investigation keeps compounding.
Run a 20-minute micro-investigation
- Pick a topic your workspace already knows well, like a project, a company, or a person, and open a "New chat" (⌘⇧C). Ask two or three questions, @-mentioning the central entity.
- In the session list, right-click the chat → "Pin as case…". Read the entity count in the toast.
- In the case detail, set a name and type a one-line driving question into "What is this case about?".
- Click a pinned chip to open its entity page; hover one connection and read the source sentence it came from.
- From a neighboring entity's page, use "Add to case" to pin it into your case.
- Back in the case, click "Show on canvas" to see the network isolated on the graph, then write one finding into the "Investigation log".
A named case with a driving question, two or more pinned entities, and one adopted conversation. The next time you open it after new notes have landed, the "New evidence on N pinned entities since your last visit:" strip does the catching-up for you.
When git and the terminal join the case
Some investigations touch code or data, and the chat composer already has the bridges. Everything below is one @ away:
- "Terminals" in the @-picker captures an open terminal's recent scrollback as a context chip. Crunch a CSV in the dock, then hand the output to the agent as evidence.
- "Branch (Diff with Main)" captures your working branch's diff as a chip. It's the move for "what actually changed?" questions in a code-adjacent investigation.
- The agent can also run commands itself: you'll see "Running command" chips (and "Running in background" for long jobs) with the captured output inline.
- The agent can drive a real terminal. Its commands act on your actual system, so approve them as carefully as you'd run them yourself.
Review the investigation workflow and manage the case
The full recipe in one breath: dump the sources → interrogate in chat → pin the chat as a case → frame the driving question → grow the pins, source sentence in hand → map the places → write dated notes so claims become statements → ask for the cited write-up → come back to the new-evidence strip. And remember the shape of the thing: a case is a viewpoint over the one graph. "Remove case" deletes only the container, and "Your notes and conversations are kept."
Never lose a case, and make your findings count
Jump straight back to any case by name. Once your tabs are open, ⌘⇧K opens the Cases list, and every case is its own command-palette entry (⌘⇧F, subtitle "N pinned"). Typing a case's name is the fastest way back in.
Write durable findings as real notes. The investigation log is a quick scratchpad for the running thought. A finding becomes a first-class statement, searchable, cited, part of the graph, only once you commit it to an actual note. Jot the thought in the log, carve the conclusion into a note.
That's the course. Everything you learned has a place in this one recipe: sources in, entities out, a question with a home, a network you grew one source sentence at a time, and a write-up that can prove where every fact came from. The next investigation is the same order, run again on a question that matters to you.