Concepts & Inspector

The canvas is the centre of Nesso. Concepts are nodes; typed relations are edges. The Inspector is the right-hand panel where you enrich whatever you’ve got selected.

Adding concepts

Bottom dock -> + adds a new concept near the centre of the viewport.
N adds a concept at the viewport centre (same as the dock +).
Double-click empty canvas to add a concept at the pointer.
New concepts open in edit mode. Type the label and press Enter to commit, Esc to cancel.
Double-click a concept to rename it inline.

Concepts you add are stored locally in IndexedDB. Switch graphs from the sidebar; create new graphs from the Graphs list.

Drawing relations

Drag from a node’s right edge (out handle) to another node’s left edge (in handle). On release, a relation picker opens, grouped by category. Pick the relation type and the edge is created.

Drag-to-self is ignored, so you can’t accidentally create self-loops.
The connection line previews with the same quadratic geometry the final edge uses.
Edge type can be changed any time from the Inspector when an edge is selected.

See the relation types reference for the full list, semantic meaning, and coefficients. Per-type line style and glyph come from @nesso-how/relation-types; edge encoding density is under Display options below.

Selecting and editing

Click a node or edge to select it. The Inspector reflects the selection.
Hold ⌘ / Ctrl and click to toggle additional items into the selection.
Drag on empty canvas to marquee-select multiple items.
Del or Backspace (or the trash icon in the bottom dock) deletes the selection — one relation, one concept, or every concept in a marquee. Edges attached to a deleted concept go with it. Relation delete is only from the dock or keyboard, not from the relation Inspector.
⌘C / Ctrl+C (copy icon in the bottom dock) copies the selection. Copying concepts also copies relations between them; copying a relation includes its two endpoints. ⌘V / Ctrl+V (paste icon) duplicates the clipboard with a small offset and selects the new items.
Arrow keys nudge a selected concept; Shift + arrows move it in larger steps.
⌘Z / Ctrl+Z undoes structural edits; ⌘⇧Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z redoes. History has 50 steps and resets when you switch or import a graph.

The Inspector

When a concept is selected, the Inspector shows two tabs.

Overview

Title: edit inline. Pressing Enter commits; Esc reverts.
FSRS stats: when due, stability (in days), and last self-rating. Surfaced read-only.
Relations: outgoing and incoming edges grouped by category. Click a relation chip to jump to the connected node; click the type to swap relation in place.

Notes

Three free-text fields that travel with the concept and feed both the AI mentor and Review:

Definition: a one-sentence-ish explanation in your own words.
Examples: one per line. Press Shift+Enter or use the + button to add a new line.
Notes: anything else: caveats, sources, mnemonics.

These power the Review recall question. The model is told to aim at the topic suggested by your notes without paraphrasing the definition, so active recall still works.

Concept image

Press the picture icon to open the Wikimedia Commons search. The query auto-fills from the concept title and runs immediately; pick any result to attach a 200-px thumbnail to the concept. The image shows in the Inspector, in Review mode, and is included as context for the AI mentor.

The image link and Commons description URL are persisted with the graph, so attribution is preserved on export.

Sidebar → Display controls how the active graph is rendered: heatmap overlay, edge encoding density, curve style, and auto flip. Choices are saved with the graph in IndexedDB (and included in JSON export). New graphs start from the app defaults until you change them.

When Display → Curve is set to Arc, Auto flip (on by default) bends relations toward the side that avoids overlapping nodes — flipping when the target is above the source on the right, or below on the left — and updates live while you drag concepts. Flip curve in the Inspector is Off | Auto | On while auto flip is on: Auto follows layout, Off / On pin a manual bend on that edge. With auto flip off for that graph, the control is Off | On only.

When an edge is selected

The Inspector shows the relation as a chip with its category colour and a dropdown of every relation type. Picking a new type updates the edge in place; the graph keeps its endpoints and identity.

Stats and search

Sidebar -> Stats shows concept count, link count, and current zoom (a handy gut-check for graph size).
⌘K / Ctrl+K opens a fuzzy search palette over concept titles. Enter selects and recenters the viewport; Esc closes.

Edge encoding density

Edges carry three visual channels: colour (category), line style, and glyph. Crank this down for large or printed graphs from Sidebar → Display → Edges:

Full: colour + style + glyph (default).
Category: colour only.
Minimal: plain line, no encoding.

Symmetric relations (similarity, opposition) never render an arrowhead regardless of encoding.