Reference

Glossary

The words Walden uses, each in a line, with the page that says more.

Ideas and their pages

Approach: How you’d solve it, at the level of a sketch. One of the parts of an idea. The idea page.
Board: A page for diagrams: notes, boxes, shapes and the lines between them. Boards.
Draft: Something chat wrote onto a page or a board. It isn’t yours, and doesn’t count, until you keep it. Drafts.
Evidence: A quote under the Problem: what someone said, saw or counted that shows the problem is real. The idea page.
File: A PDF, document, spreadsheet, text file or image kept on an idea or on a project. Files.
Flow: The places someone goes in the product, what they can do in each, and where each action leads. Sketching the screens.
Idea: One thing you might build. Its first page holds its parts; it can have more pages. Welcome to Walden.
Not doing: What the idea leaves out on purpose. Whoever builds it treats this as a boundary. Unknowns and Not doing.
Page: One page of an idea: a written page, a board or a UI sketch. Pages.
Part: One of the five questions an idea answers: Problem, Worth, Approach, Unknowns and Not doing. The idea page.
Problem: What’s going wrong, and for whom. Every idea starts here. The idea page.
Unknown: Something you don’t know yet. It stays open until someone settles it, leaves it to the builder or rules it out. Unknowns and Not doing.
Worth: How much time the idea is worth, as a ceiling, so the people who decide can weigh it. The idea page.

Not started: Nothing written in that part yet.
Sketched: Written down, but not yet saying everything a builder would need.
Shaped: Each part says what it’s for: who has the problem, how the answer fits together, what could change it.
Ready: Someone could build it without coming back to you. Readiness.
Waiting on you: A question nobody has answered, or a build to look over. Finding your way around.
Handed off: Gone to whoever builds it. Handing off.
Shelved: Not now, and that is a decision too. It can come off the shelf any time. Organizing your ideas.
Deleted: Gone from every list, but kept for thirty days so it can be restored. Organizing your ideas.

Chat: The conversation beside an idea, and another beside your list of ideas. It answers and drafts; it never writes on the page itself. Chat.
Second reader: A reader who reads an idea as a builder, a decider, a fair skeptic or someone you describe, and asks questions in the margin. It never rewrites anything. The second reader.
Question in the margin: A question beside the part it’s about, from a reader or a person. Anyone in the workspace can leave one. Writing together.
Credits: What chat, readers and sketches use. Each plan comes with some. Plans and credits.

UI sketch: A rough drawing of each place in a flow, for desktop, tablet and phone. A sketch, not a design. Sketching the screens.
Place: A screen, a dialog or a message in a flow.
Version: One of several drawings of the same place (v1, v2…). The place stays open until you keep one. Changing a sketch.
Drift: A control on a sketch that does nothing the flow names. Changing a sketch.

Idea book: Your own workspace. Only you can see it. Workspaces and roles.
Workspace: Where ideas live: your idea book, or a team’s shared one. Workspaces and roles.
Owner, editor, viewer: The three roles in a team. Owners run the workspace, editors write, viewers read and ask questions. Workspaces and roles.
Project: The ideas for one product, with its repositories and a shelf of shared files. Projects.
Repository: A product’s code on GitHub, connected to a project so Walden can read it. Repositories.
Package: What handing off as a file downloads: the idea to read in a browser, and as text. Handing off.

Coding agent: Software that writes code, such as Claude Code or Cursor. It can read an idea from Walden and build it. Coding agents.
Key: What lets a coding agent into a workspace. It opens every project there, and the ideas in none; nothing in another workspace. Coding agents.
Picked up: Someone’s agent has chosen the idea. Only that person’s agents can work on it, until someone takes it over. Following a build.
Task: One piece of the agent’s work, named after the part of the idea it builds.
Built: A person looked at what was built and marked it built. No agent can. Following a build.
Decided before: A question in the margin when an idea goes against something an earlier idea ruled out or settled. Decisions from earlier ideas.