Navigating
Search
Type in the search field and it matches against a node's title or summary text as you type, showing up to six live results you can click straight to. Every match is highlighted on the map itself at the same time, so you can see where your results sit relative to everything else even before clicking one.
Zoom and pan
Scroll to zoom, drag empty canvas to pan, drag a node to move it — repositioning a node this way persists across launches, so the map keeps the shape you gave it. An on-canvas hint — "drag · scroll to zoom · click a node to inspect" — stays visible as a standing reminder of these three gestures.
Because a dragged position persists, a layout you reposition by hand only ever grows further from whatever NEXUS would generate fresh. There is no "reset to default layout" control reachable from any menu or button in this release — the underlying capability exists, but nothing in the interface currently exposes it. If you want the generated layout back, the only path today is repositioning nodes by hand.
The toolbar
Beyond search, three toggles and one button sit in the map's toolbar:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Focus | Dims every node except the selected one and its direct connections, without hiding anything |
| Pulses | Shows ambient particles drifting along connections, sized to give a sense of connection weight at a glance |
| Live | Adds ambient drift plus a camera that automatically follows activity; on automatically in Stream Mode |
| Preview Synapse Flow | Runs a one-off visual ripple across the whole graph |
Preview Synapse Flow is a visualization only. It demonstrates how activity would propagate through the graph's real nodes and connections — it never reads or triggers any live agent activity. See Context Actions for the per-node version of the same thing and why neither is ever mistaken for a live signal.
Select vs. drill in
A single click selects a node and opens its inspector — see Inspecting Nodes. A double click, the inspector's own "Open" action, or the top item in a node's right-click menu all drill in instead: they navigate to the real thing behind the node. What that means depends on the node's kind, and the label on the action itself says which behavior you're about to get:
| Node kind | Label | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Session | Open Session | Opens the session and brings it into view |
| Agent, with a live session | Open Agent & Skills | Opens that agent's Agent & Skills view |
| Agent, no live session | Focus Subgraph | Selects it and switches on Focus mode — there's nothing running to open |
| Bit page (captured bit) | Edit Bit | Opens the bit editor for a directly-captured note |
| Bit page (session) | Open Bit Editor | Opens the bit page editor |
| File | Reveal File | Reveals it in the file sidebar |
| Workspace | Switch Workspace | Switches to that workspace |
| Memory, Task, Decision, Handoff, Artifact, Conflict | Focus Subgraph | No dedicated editor exists yet for these kinds, so drilling in always focuses the subgraph instead |
Focus mode, beyond the toolbar toggle
NEXUS also switches Focus mode on automatically whenever drilling in has nowhere real to go — the same "Focus Subgraph" cases in the table above. It's a way of never leaving you looking at a dead click: if there's nothing to open, you at least get an isolated view of that node's neighborhood.
The legend is also a filter
The node-type legend lists every kind with a colored dot and a label — Workspace, Agent, Session, Bit, File, Memory, Task, Decision, Handoff, Artifact, Conflict — and doubles as a filter: click a kind to hide every node of that kind, click again to show it again. An eye icon on each entry makes a hidden kind obvious at a glance rather than just quietly dimmed. The legend's own expanded-or-collapsed state is remembered the next time you open NEXUS; which kinds you've hidden is not — every kind starts visible again on the next launch.
Where to go next
- Reading the Map — what becomes a node and what a connection label means in the first place.
- Inspecting Nodes — what opens when you select rather than drill in.
- Context Actions — the right-click menus this page's toolbar controls also appear inside.