Navigating the workspace

Three columns, and once you’ve seen them this way you always know where you are. Left is what exists, the middle is where you work, right is what you’re looking at.

The whole room

The workspace is three panes and nothing else opens. The sidebar on the left is what exists, the chat in the middle is where you work, and the detail panel on the right is what you’re looking at.

The workspace, to scale

Mitchell Residence

Sidebar

What exists

220px

Chat

Where you work

60%

Detail panel

What you’re looking at

40%

The sidebar, what exists

A single scrolling column, not a set of tabs. Themes, the Household of your clients, the Briefs you’ve drafted, and your past Sessions. A theme carries an AI tag while it’s only suggested, and a marker when a gap has opened inside it.

What a row can carry

AISuggestedFormform proposed this theme and you have not confirmed it yet.

New evidenceSomething a client said since you opened the workspace has linked into this theme.

⚠Needs attentionSomething inside it is unresolved: a gap, or a clash between two decisions.

3On a person, not a themeHow many pieces of evidence have arrived from them since you got here.

The chat, where you work

Nearly everything happens here. You ask about your clients, propose moves and themes, and draft or reshape briefs by typing in plain language. Everything the rest of this guide describes is typed into this one column.

Pressure-test my current directionWhere do clients contradict?What gaps should I explore next?

Where do Sarah and James actually disagree

The detail panel, what you’re looking at

Click a theme and the right pane fills with its detail while the chat stays beside it. Close it with Escape and the chat widens again. Opening it is only looking: it doesn’t change what the assistant is working on.

A theme

The Quiet Core

4 directions · 11 evidence · 2 constraints

⚠Sarah’s daylight at her desk is unaddressed by any confirmed move.

Moves

Relocate the evening woodworking to the detached garage.

Evidence

Constraints

One level in, the same pane

The Quiet CoreDirection

Relocate the evening woodworking to the detached garage: a boundary on the saw rather than on him.

Evidence

EvidenceClient

He is out in the garage weekday evenings, 7:30 to 10.

EvidenceDesigner

The detached garage shares no wall with the house.

Why looking and working are kept apart

All 12 parts

In most tools, selecting a thing is how you tell the software what you mean. That works when it has no idea what you’re talking about. Here it does, so the detail panel is just a window, and the conversation carries the work.