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Get startedYour first project

Your first project

When no project is open, the window shows the gallery: the Syncretic mark, the line “Ideas as points of light, joined on ink.”, three buttons, and a card for every project you have.

  • New project (gold) creates “Untitled project”, opens it in Shape, and asks for a name. ⇧⌘N does the same from anywhere.
  • Start with an example creates a small finished project called Ideas, built from the app’s design: three node types (Concept, Thinker, Source), five relationship types (PROPOSED, SUPPORTS, CONTRADICTS, RELATES_TO, EXPLAINS), and twelve nodes about information theory, cybernetics and the free energy principle, with links to Wikipedia and Nature. It’s the quickest way to see every part of the app with something in it.
  • Import… reads a .syncretic.json export (see Sharing & files).

Each project card shows coloured dots for its node types, its name, “3 types · 5 relationships” (and ”· draft” while the shape has no types yet), and when it was last changed. Right-click a card, or a project in the sidebar, for Rename…, Export… and Delete…. Deleting asks first: “Its shape, graph and history are removed from this Mac. This can’t be undone.”

The app reopens the last project you had open. Click the Syncretic mark at the top of the sidebar, or choose All Projects from the command palette, to get back to the gallery.

What a project holds

A project is the shape, the graph, the notes, the history of questions, and the conversations with the AI builder, all in one folder on this Mac. Opening a project opens its database; the first thing you see is Shape if the shape is still empty, otherwise Graph.

A project can be open in only one copy of Syncretic at a time. If the database is locked by another copy, the app says so and shows the graph empty rather than risk the file; quit the other copy and open the project again.

Three ways to begin a graph

  1. Draw the shape yourself. Double-click the Shape canvas for a node type, name it, add properties, drag the gold handle to another card for a relationship. Then switch to Graph and double-click to add nodes. This is the Shape and Graph sections.
  2. Describe it to the AI. In Shape, click Build with Claude (or ChatGPT) and type “Books I’ve read, who wrote them, the ideas in them and which ideas build on which”, or paste a link, or drop in a whiteboard photo. The shape is designed for you and added, undoably. Then in Graph, press ⌘N and paste an article: the nodes and relationships arrive as a draft you review. See Build with AI.
  3. Import an export, or open a graph shared on the web with its Open in Syncretic button.

Next

The window names every part of what you’re looking at. A ten-minute tour walks through shaping, building and asking once, end to end.

Install & set upThe window