Thoughts & Nodes
Create, edit, nest, and organize the building blocks of your garden.
Creating thoughts
Thoughts are the building blocks of Neural Garden. Each thought is a card on the canvas with a title and an optional rich-text body.
- 1Double-click (or double-tap) empty space on the canvas.
- 2Type a title for your thought.
- 3Press Enter or click away to save.
- 4Click the thought again to expand and edit its body.
Editing content
Click a thought to select it, then press Enter or double-click to edit. When zoomed in (full detail), this opens the rich text editor with formatting toolbar. When zoomed out (compact, dot-label, or dot view), you get a lightweight inline title editor right on the node — no zoom change needed. The inline editor shows a dropdown of matching thoughts as you type, making it easy to find and link to existing ideas. The rich editor supports headings, bold, italic, lists, code blocks, and links. Use the toolbar or markdown-style shortcuts.
Wikilinks and backlinks
Type [[ in the editor to create a wikilink to another thought. A popup shows matching thoughts as you type — select one to create a clickable link. Wikilinks automatically create backlinks, so you can always see which thoughts reference each other. Links work across sub-gardens, so you can reference any thought regardless of where it lives in your hierarchy. If a linked thought appears in multiple places, clicking the link lets you pick which placement to navigate to.
Multiple placements
A single thought can appear on multiple canvases simultaneously. Creating a reference placement puts the same thought in a new location — editing it in one place updates it everywhere. Deleting a placement removes that instance without affecting other placements. The thought itself only disappears when its last placement is removed.
Nesting thoughts
Thoughts can contain other thoughts, creating a hierarchy. Drag a thought onto another to nest it, or use the context menu. Nested thoughts appear as a list inside their parent. You can expand the parent to see and interact with children directly on the canvas. Drilling into a parent thought opens its own sub-garden canvas.
- 1Right-click a thought and choose 'Nest under...' to pick a parent.
- 2Or drag and drop one thought onto another.
- 3Click the + button inside a parent to add a new child inline.
- 4Use the AI sparkle button to generate suggested children.
Node types and appearance
Thoughts render differently based on their content. Image nodes show a full-width preview. Link nodes show a favicon and domain. Plain thoughts show title and a text preview. At different zoom levels, nodes switch between four levels of detail: full card (with editor, backlinks, and properties), compact (title and snippet), dot-with-label (single-line title), and dot (colored shape only). Type colors and shapes are preserved at all zoom levels for easy identification.
Properties panel
Select a thought and the properties panel opens on the right (desktop) or as a bottom sheet (mobile). Here you can edit the title, body, assign types, set typed properties, view backlinks, and manage nesting. Changes to type or properties update all placements of the same thought immediately. The panel stays open while you interact with the canvas — close it explicitly when done.