What IdeaBoard is#
IdeaBoard is a small cross-project tool for capturing ideas. It is not tied to one repository. You write a raw note, optionally tag it with a project name such as Nodal and some free-form tags, and paste or drop screenshots straight into it. Later, the note is split into distinct ideas, each with a permanent number, and you choose which ones to act on. It is deliberately only the source list. The board does not plan anything. Planning happens inside each project’s own documents, by the agent that will do the work.
The board is built as a web page with its own small database, and everything lives inside that page: notes, ideas and pasted images are stored there rather than on disk. It is private to its owner. It exists because Nodal is a project where ideas are plentiful and attention is scarce, which is exactly the situation the home page calls the cheap-ideas era.
The pipeline#
- Capture. Write a note on the board. Tag it with a project and any tags. Paste or drag in screenshots. The raw note and its images are never deleted or rewritten by later steps; the note is only marked Organized once it has been split into ideas.
- Organize with AI. On a note, the board shows a ready-made prompt that asks an AI to split the note into distinct ideas, merging ones that are really the same idea told from two angles, and to return them as a list of titles and summaries. You paste that prompt into any AI chat, paste the answer back into the note’s response box and click to create ideas. The board parses the answer, gives each idea the next global sequence number and copies the note’s images onto every idea it produced. The board itself never calls an AI; you supply the response from whichever assistant you like.
- Select. Every organized idea gets a checkbox and a stable number such as #7. Tick the ones worth acting on now. A floating bar shows how many are selected and offers a button that copies a plain-text handoff block with the idea numbers, titles, summaries and the board address.
- Plan. Paste the block, or just say “look up ideas #3, #4 and #7 on the idea board and plan them”, to whichever agent is about to do the work. That agent writes the plan itself, inside the project’s docs.
Two small rules make it robust. Idea numbers are permanent and never reused, so you can cite #12 in a chat, a commit message or another project’s docs without ambiguity. And deleting a note does not delete the ideas already organized from it.
Why it works this way#
The design is a reaction to a common failure. People write ideas in notes apps and chat windows, then lose them, or hand an agent a long, tangled note and get a tangled plan back. By splitting capture, organization and selection into separate steps, IdeaBoard keeps each step small and each artifact inspectable. By not calling an AI itself, it avoids a hidden cost and a hidden dependency. By storing images next to ideas, it keeps the part of an idea that was easiest to show and hardest to describe.
How IdeaBoard shaped Nodal#
The clearest evidence is the program that followed it. On 13 September 2026 an implementation plan took eight ideas from the board (numbers 1 to 5 and 7 to 9, with idea 6 left out of scope) and turned them into five small product packages, each to be built and reviewed separately.
1. One right-side panel with tabs#
Replace the fixed Terminal, Files and Browser labels with a real tab model: a single panel host with Files, Review, Browser, Terminal and later Side chat tabs.
2. Artifacts and file previews#
Project-scoped output records, file cards, more preview types and rich links, with an Open in panel action.
3. A read-only Review tab#
A changed-files card in the thread and a dedicated panel with a file list and line diffs.
4. Completed-turn disclosure#
Fold each finished turn into the existing Worked for line, with the final answer kept visible.
5. Close rules and shutdown progress#
One coordinator for every way to close the app, and a live progress display while terminals and providers shut down.
The plan went through the board’s screenshots carefully. One showed a menu at the right edge of a conversation offering Files, Side chat, Browser and Terminal. Another showed a compact changed-files card with counts of added and removed lines. Others showed small icons before links, and a task shown collapsed and then expanded. The plan used the interaction patterns from the images and deliberately did not copy another product’s visual style, using Nodal’s own design language and theme tokens instead.
Several of these packages are now in the beta: the sidebar tabs, the Review tab and the collapsed turn line are visible on the features page, and the panel host is described on the architecture page. Side chat, the part of idea 2, is intentionally postponed until after the beta.
Rules that came with the plan#
The plan set architecture rules that outlived the packages. The main process owns authority, and the renderer only requests. A single tab model replaces a hard-coded list. A tab must not start a terminal, a browser or a provider session until you or an authorized agent opens it. Live resources are not restored after a restart, only safe layout. Separate pull requests for each package, because a single change that tries to do everything cannot be reviewed. And, importantly, the board is a source list and not a planning tool.
IdeaBoard and AgentBoard#
The two boards have similar names and different jobs. IdeaBoard is for the human: it holds ideas before there is a plan. AgentBoard is for the agents: it holds messages, claims and locks while work is happening. Ideas flow from IdeaBoard into a plan, and the work of building that plan is coordinated on AgentBoard.
Could you use it?#
IdeaBoard is a personal tool, hosted privately, and is not part of the Nodal download. The pipeline, though, is portable: a place for raw notes, a prompt that splits them, permanent numbers and a short handoff block. If you want to copy that habit, nothing about it needs special software. And if you want to watch the idea board feed the next feature live, that is what the stream is for.