Notes, frames & comments

Evidence and hypotheses are the substance of a case. Notes, frames, comments and highlights are how you organise it: what to do next, which things belong together, what a colleague should look at, and the story in the order it happened.

A blue frame groups the events of one day in order (drag the frame by its title: everything inside moves with it). Three sticky notes hold questions, facts and a warning, the first piece of evidence is highlighted in yellow, and a collapsed frame keeps background material out of the way.

Sticky notes

A note is free text on the board: a question, a fact you confirmed by phone, a to-do, a warning.

Place one: press N and click on the board, right-click the canvas → Add note here, or press ⌘K → New note.
Write: double-click the note. Markdown works: **bold**, lists, headings and links. Press Esc or click outside to save.
Colour: right-click → Colour: yellow, blue, green, pink or grey. A colour code shared by the team (say, green for confirmed facts and pink for risks) makes a busy board easy to read.
Resize: select the note and drag its edges.
Link it like anything else: pull a line from one of its ports to the evidence it is about.
Duplicate: ⌘D, or right-click → Duplicate.

Two people editing the same note at the same moment never overwrite each other. The second save is refused, the board says who changed the note in the meantime, and your text is copied to the clipboard so you can merge it.

Frames

A frame is a named, tinted area that groups things: a timeline of one day, everything about one person, the exfiltration path, the evidence still to review.

Draw one: press F and drag a rectangle on the board. Or ⌘K → New frame.
Name it: double-click the title bar.
Put things in: drag them into the frame, or right-click them → Move to frame. Whatever is in a frame moves with it. Drag the frame by its title bar.
Take things out: drag them out, or Move to frame → No frame.
Tint: right-click → Tint: grey, yellow, blue, green, pink or violet.
Collapse: the arrow in the title bar folds the frame down to its title and shows how many items it holds. Expand it again the same way.
Resize: select it and drag its edges.

Deleting a frame keeps what was inside it: the items stay on the board where they were.

Comments

Comments are conversations pinned to a spot: an asset, a single finding, or a point on the board. They are how a team talks about the case without leaving it.

Start one: press C and click where the comment belongs. Or right-click something → Comment.
Reply: click the pin to open the conversation and type a reply.
Resolve: when the question is answered, Resolve greys the pin. It is never deleted, so the conversation stays on record. Reopen brings it back.
Resolved comments are hidden unless you switch on View → Comments → Show resolved comments.

A pin moves with whatever it is pinned to. Every comment conversation is also a discussion thread: the Timeline panel’s Threads tab lists them all.

Highlights

Right-click anything → Highlight and pick a marker colour: yellow, green, blue, pink or red. None takes it off. A highlighted asset or card gets a coloured ring; a highlighted finding gets a coloured halo.

Highlights are for your eyes and your team’s: mark what is confirmed, what is disputed, what belongs to one person. Then View → Highlight by → Only highlighted shows just those and fades the rest.

Highlight by can also light up everything from one source, one detector or one hypothesis, without you marking anything by hand.

Keeping the board tidy

Tool	What it does
Tidy up (More menu, or right-click the canvas)	Lays everything out automatically, left to right along the lines. One step, so Undo restores your layout
Collapse findings (`E`)	Folds a busy asset’s findings into a ring of severity colours
Collapse all (View)	Folds every asset at once; Expand all unfolds them
Bring to front / Send to back	Decides what sits on top where things overlap
Remove card from board	Takes a hypothesis card off the board without deleting the hypothesis
Snapshots	Keep the board as it is now before a big reorganisation

Selecting something fades everything that is not connected to it, so even a large board reads well one piece at a time. For a clean overview, zoom out: the board switches to shapes and names, then to compact chips. See Navigating & shortcuts.

An AI agent can keep a board in order too, over MCP: give new items a spot (place_case_board_items), group items into a frame (frame_case_board_items), tidy the whole board up (tidy_case_board, with a dry run first), and add notes, colours and highlights (apply_case_board_ops). See AI agents & MCP.