Docs

UI sketches

Changing a sketch

Once a sketch is drawn, you change it in your own words: annotate a part, ask chat for a change, or have a place drawn again or another way. The flow stays the source of truth throughout.

Everything here happens on the sketch page, in the Places list on the left, under the place in view. If you haven’t drawn one yet, start with Sketching the screens.

Annotate a part

  1. Under Annotations, choose Annotate a part of this screen.
  2. Click the part on the screen. Press Esc to stop picking.
  3. Write what it must do, or what whoever builds it should know, and press Enter.

Annotations are yours alone: Walden never writes one. Each is a numbered pin on the screen and a line in the list. The line says where it stands: for the next redraw, drawn in, or not drawn in with the reason. Click one to bring its part into view; hover it to edit it or take it off.

An annotation doesn’t redraw anything by itself. Once a place has some the drawing hasn’t followed, its button becomes Redraw with 2 annotations: the next drawing follows them and says what it did with each. Annotations stay through every change, and go with the idea to whoever builds it.

A coding agent reading the sketches gets your annotations too.

Ask chat for a change

Open chat on the sketch. Chat knows which place you’re looking at; the chat box says so beside About. Say the change plainly, starting with what to do: “Move New task above the list”, “Make the filters a dropdown”, “Put the totals in a sidebar”.

A change put like that goes straight to the screen in view. Chat says Changing “Board”., and the change lands already made, with Changed and Undo under the answer. Undo puts the place back as it was, unless someone has changed it since.

  • Only what you name changes. A change never touches the flow, and never removes a control that does one of the flow’s actions.
  • A change may add a control. If that control does none of the flow’s actions, it’s marked as drift (see below).
  • A new place, or a link to another place, is a change to the flow. Say so (“a new place”, “change the flow”) and chat drafts it there for you to keep. Put as a plain change to the screen, chat says it isn’t one and draws nothing.

Anything else, such as a question, chat answers as it always does, and what it draws arrives as a draft. The line under the chat box says roughly what each kind of message costs on a sketch. See Chat.

Draw a place another way

  1. Choose Another way.
  2. Say how, if you like (“Draw it differently: as a side panel, steps in another order…”), and choose Another way to draw this.
  3. It arrives as a draft. Keep it, and it joins the place’s versions as the next one: v2, v3 and so on.

The place is then open until you keep one version; see Sketching the screens. A place holds up to 5. If Walden finds no other way worth drawing, it says why, and that costs nothing.

Draw a place again

Sketch again puts Sketch “Board” again: in the chat box. Say what should be different and send it. If the flow has changed since the place was drawn, the button is Redraw from the flow instead, and draws the place from the flow as it is now.

The new drawing arrives as a draft over the old one; Discard puts the old one back. Only the version you’re looking at is drawn again. To redraw every place, use Sketch the flow under the flow.

Drift from the flow

Sometimes a screen shows a control, in ink, that does none of the place’s actions. The sketch has drifted from the flow. The control gets a dashed outline, the place is marked Drifted, and its panel says Drifted from the flow with what’s on the screen but not in the flow. Nothing settles it by itself. You choose:

  • Add to the flow. Writes the request in the chat box for you to send. Chat drafts the change to the flow; once you keep it, the place can be drawn again from the flow.
  • Take it off the sketch. Takes the control off the screen at once, with no model and no credits. Undo brings it back.

What Walden checks for you

Each time a screen is laid out, Walden checks it for parts past the edge, words cut off, a popup over the part the idea changes, and controls on top of each other. The next change you ask for in chat fixes those too.