Docs

Thinking it through

Drafts

Whatever chat writes arrives as a draft: on the idea where it belongs, clearly marked, and not yours until you keep it. Keep what says what you mean and discard the rest.

What becomes a draft

  • Everything chat makes beside an idea: parts, list items, text, pages, flows and diagrams on a board. See Chat.
  • What chat makes of your first message on Home: the idea, and sometimes a page for its flow or a board, each a draft of its own.
  • UI sketches as they are drawn, and each other way of drawing a place. See Sketching the screens.

The second reader never drafts anything. It only asks questions, in the margin. See The second reader.

How a draft looks

On a page
A drafted block sits inside a dashed outline on a light wash, with a bar above it: Draft, Keep and Discard. Several blocks from one draft share one bar.
In a list
New items in a list already on the page, such as Unknowns or Not doing, are tagged Draft. An item the draft would take out stays readable, struck through and tagged Take out?
A part written again
A new Problem or Approach sits under yours. Yours stays until you keep the new one.
In a flow
Drafted places and actions have dashed edges, with Keep and Discard under the flow. A drafted place isn’t sketched until it’s kept.
On a board
Drafted shapes and lines carry a bar above them, such as Drafted 4 things, with Keep and Discard.
A new page
It has a dashed outline in the page strip until you keep what’s on it.

Each draft also has a card in the chat that made it, saying what it is and where it went, with Keep, Discard and Show me, which takes you to it.

Keep or discard

Each draft is kept or discarded on its own, wherever you meet it: on the page, on the board, or on its card in the chat. One message can bring several drafts. Take what’s useful and leave the rest.

  • Keep makes it ordinary content, yours to change like anything you wrote. Walden says Kept. It counts now.
  • Discard takes it away. Anything it would have taken out stays, and a part it wrote again is left as you had it.

You can edit a draft before you keep it. Anyone who can edit the idea can keep or discard a draft, not only the person who asked for it.

Drafts don’t count until kept

Until you keep it, a draft is left out of:

  • Readiness. It doesn’t move a part to Sketched, Shaped or Ready. See Readiness.
  • The counts at the top of Unknowns and Not doing.
  • Presenting. Drafted blocks and pages don’t show. See Presenting.
  • The hand-off. Only what was kept leaves Walden. See Handing off.

That’s the rule behind it: chat never writes your idea for you. It drafts, and what counts is what you chose to keep.

The one exception: changes to a sketch

A plain change to a UI sketch asked for in chat, such as “make the button say Save”, lands kept straight away, with Undo on its card, instead of as a draft. See Changing a sketch.