Brainstorming

Decisions in Your Content

Start explorations from a Sheet, Flow, or Scene, and find, apply, and follow up the decisions that affect it.

Brainstorming connects to the rest of your project in both directions. You can start a session from the content you want to change. Decisions connected to a Sheet, Flow, or Scene remain in its editor and on the dashboard after they are applied. Decisions that name the content can also appear in the command palette. The editor’s amber count only tracks decisions still to apply.

Explore changes from your content

Every Sheet, Flow, and Scene editor has a lightbulb at the left of its header, labeled Explore changes. It opens the Explorations dialog, which has three parts:

Starting context: an overview of the content, such as its name, shortcut, and description. It is saved with the session as a reference; it is not an editable copy and it does not change the original.
Decisions about the content, when there are any. See below.
Linked explorations: the sessions that already explore this content. Select Resume to continue one, or View for an archived session.

The Explorations dialog opened from the Flow Act 3 endings, with its starting context, the decisions about it, and a linked exploration to resume

To start a new session about the content, select New exploration, give it a title and optionally write what you would like to explore, then select Create and explore. To add the content to a session that already exists, select Link existing and search for it by title.

The New exploration form in the Explorations dialog of the Sheet Mara, with a title and the question to explore

Viewers can open and resume the explorations they have access to, but need editing access to create or link one.

References inside a session

A session can keep more of the project at hand than its starting content. References, the link button at the top left of the canvas, opens Session references, where you link Sheets, Flows, Scenes, Assets, and localized texts to the session, each with a purpose such as Reference or Affects. A Sheet, Flow, or Scene linked this way also lists the session among its linked explorations, with its decisions.

The Session references panel with content type and purpose selectors and a linked Scene, The lighthouse, whose overview is unchanged

Each reference keeps the overview you consulted when you linked it. If the content changes later, the reference says Overview changed since linking, and Open current content takes you to the editor. Linking never changes the original content.

Decisions in the editor

When accepted decisions still have something to apply on a Sheet, Flow, or Scene, its lightbulb shows an amber count. Hover over it to read a summary, such as “2 decisions about Mara · 1 to apply”.

The Explorations dialog lists the Decisions about that content: first those still to apply, then open proposals, then those already applied or that need no change, and finally withdrawn and superseded ones. The list includes the decisions that name the content in Affects and every decision of the sessions that explore it.

You can open any of them in its session. On a decision still to apply here, editors can also:

select Mark applied to declare its state without leaving the dialog;
select Go apply to work on it in the editor.

Apply a decision

Go apply opens the affected content with the decision pinned under the editor header: its title, verb, conclusion, and session, next to the content you are about to change.

The Flow Act 3 endings open in its editor with the decision The player chooses who keeps the light under the header, offering Mark applied, Partially, and No change needed

Make your changes, then choose Mark applied, Partially, or No change needed, optionally with a short note. For five seconds after marking you can Undo, which restores the previous state; then the banner closes on its own. You can also close it, and it goes away when you move to other content.

Storyarn never applies a decision for you and never checks the content to decide whether it was applied. The state is what your team declares.

Notifications

Decisions notify the people who have to act, in the notifications inbox:

When	Who is notified
A decision is proposed	The responsible person, who has to accept it
A decision is accepted	Its proposer, and everyone who started a discussion about it
An accepted decision has a next action	The person the next action is assigned to, when the decision is accepted
An affected piece of content is marked applied	The responsible person and whoever first proposed the decision

You are never notified of your own actions. Mentions and replies in a decision’s discussion arrive like any other comment notification.

The notifications inbox with two decisions marked applied and one decision proposed for you to accept

The decisions dashboard

The Decisions tab of the Brainstorming dashboard lists every decision in the project, from every session.

Filter by status: Proposals, Accepted, or Withdrawn and superseded.
Filter by application: Still to apply, Applied, or No change needed.
Turn on Group by affected content to see, for each Sheet, Flow, or Scene, the decisions about it and how many are still to apply.

The Decisions tab of the Brainstorming dashboard grouped by affected content, with the Flow Act 3 endings and the Sheet Mara each listing the decision that affects them

The command palette

Press Cmd/Ctrl+K and type the name of a Sheet, Flow, or Scene. Under Jump to, the palette can show the content and a few decisions that name it, with their verb, status, and session.

Decisions follow the same access rules everywhere: you only see the decisions, sessions, and sources you are allowed to read.