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Ideas

Capturing an idea, and filing it later

Ideas is available at the library, at a pen name and inside a book. Capture is deliberately separated from organization: Calamus Ideas on iPhone is one field and a Save button, while the canvas, graph and assignment tools are on the web and desktop.

Ideas separates capture from organization. Capture must be fast enough to use while doing something else; organizing is deliberate work done later at a larger screen. The two are therefore different surfaces rather than one surface used two ways.

Capturing on iPhone

Calamus Ideas presents one field, a row of category chips and a Save button. There is no canvas, no graph and no assignment picker. It does not navigate away after saving, so several ideas can be captured in one sitting without reopening the application.

Where Ideas appears

The same module is reached from three places: the Library root, a pen name’s dashboard, and a book’s workspace. The scope differs; the tool does not. An idea captured with no book in mind can be assigned to one later.

Canvas, graph and trash

  • Canvas. A freeform board, positioned by hand, using the same layout behavior as the Moodboard.
  • Graph. A force-directed view of how ideas connect, laid out on first paint and settling rather than animating continuously.
  • Trash. A full view of its own rather than a confirmation dialog, so a deleted idea is reviewable before it goes.

Categories and assignment

Ideas have categories, which are configurable, and may be assigned to a pen name or to a book. Assignment is what moves an idea from the general pool into the project it belongs to.

Retention

The Drafts and Ideas bucket is not subject to the scheduled purge that empties Trash and Archive. Items placed there are retained until removed. See the Trash and Archive page for the tiers that do expire.