Build with AI

Write, paste an article or a link, drop in a PDF or a photo of your notes, and Claude (or ChatGPT) reads it, thinks it through, and drafts nodes and relationships that fit your shape. You review the draft; nothing in your graph changes before you add it.

Build is a Mac-app feature; the pages here describe it from the app.

Opening the panel

In Graph, the gold ± button at the right of the top bar, ⌘N, or File › Build with Claude…. The panel takes the inspector’s place on the right, 430 points wide, and widens to 620 while a draft is under review. While Claude is working with the panel closed, a ring spins round the ± button; when an answer arrives unseen, a dot marks it.

The header’s pill switches between With Claude and By hand (the choice is kept). By hand holds the form and the removal draft. The rest of this section is about With Claude.

Three header buttons: the clock (earlier conversations), the pencil (a new conversation; the current one is kept in the history), and × (close; the conversation is kept, and a run keeps going).

In Shape the same panel designs the shape: see Build the shape with AI.

What a turn does

1. Reads what you gave it, on this Mac: each link in your text is fetched and its article extracted (“Read nytimes.com · “Title” · 1,234 words”, ”, the first part only” when cut); each file is read; each picture is prepared (fit within 1,568 px, JPEG on white).
2. If Existing nodes is on and the graph is large, finds the nodes it mentions by name and by meaning, to send along.
3. Drafts nodes and relationships (or revises the draft when one is open), with the model’s thinking shown as it streams.
4. Checks it against your graph: nodes already in it, possible duplicates, what didn’t fit the shape (“3 already in it · 2 possible duplicates · 1 didn’t fit the shape”, or “All new”).
5. For changes and removals, finds what to change in your graph by running the queries it wrote (see Changes and removals).
6. Shows the draft for review.

The reply ends with the model’s summary in its own words, a result card (“A draft of 5 nodes and 7 relationships, and 2 changes to your graph · Nothing in your graph has changed yet · Review and add”), and a meta line (Sonnet · medium effort · 23 s).

After you add

The card changes to what happened: “Added 5 nodes and 7 relationships. 2 were matched to existing nodes. 1 existing node got properties it didn’t have.” with an Undo button that puts the graph back and reopens the draft. A discarded draft says “Draft discarded. Nothing was added.” A draft replaced by a later message says “Revised in a later message.”

Starting points

With nothing said yet the panel asks What should Claude add or change? and offers:

• Turn an article into nodes — “Add the people, ideas and works in this article: ”
• Add what my notes say — “Add what these notes say, and connect it to what’s already in the graph:”
• Read a photo of handwritten notes — “Add what’s in this picture of my notes.”
• Remove or tidy up — “Remove ”

When it stops

Stop (■) ends a turn: “Stopped after 12 s.” A failed turn shows the error with the fix that fits: Update Claude Code, Sign in, or Open Settings. If nothing could be read at all: “Nothing could be read from that, so there’s nothing to build from.”