Branch Press · docs

The graph

What the dots, lines, colours and sizes mean, the graphs you will meet on the site, and how to narrow one down to what you are thinking about.

What it is

A map of what you thought connected to what

A graph draws your writing as dots and lines. Each dot is a note; each line is a connection between two notes. It shows what an outline cannot: which ideas sit at the centre of your thinking, which ones stand alone, and where two lines of thought meet.

Almost every connection is one you made yourself, by writing a [[link]]. The graph is not a picture drawn for you; it is a picture of what you did.

1You write a link
[[The Tragedy of the Commons]]
Type [[ and choose a note.
2Two dots, one line
Each note becomes a dot; the link, a line.
3Colour and size
Colour is the discipline; the most connected note is the largest.

How a graph is made. Nothing is inferred: every line is a link someone wrote.

Reading one

The same on every graph on the site

economicsethicspsychologywritingborrowed

1
A dot. A note. Click it to open it, or to centre the view on it. A note that links to nothing is still a dot, on its own.
2
A line. A [[link]] between two notes, in either direction. The line has no arrow: it matters that they connect, not who pointed first.
3
Colour. The note's discipline, its first tag. The Commons is economics, so it is gold; notes that share a discipline share a colour.
4
Size. How connected a note is. Habit touches six notes directly and reaches most of the rest, so it is the largest.
5
Grey. A borrowed note: another writer's essay that one of yours branched from. Click it to read theirs.

Reading a graph. Twelve notes in four disciplines, one of them borrowed. Every graph on the site reads this way.

Scroll to zoom, drag the background to move, and drag a dot to pull it where you want it. The legend names each colour.

Why the discipline matters. It is the one tag that earns its place in every graph: it colours the dot and names the legend. A note with no discipline still appears, coloured by its kind. stage-2-style tags are ignored for colour.

How size is counted

A note's size is its reach: how many notes it can get to, and how far away they are. Notes one link away count in full. Notes two links away count as a square root, three away as a cube root, and so on, out to five. A distant connection still adds something, but it never outweighs what a note touches itself.

Three links, going nowhere. Its neighbours touch nothing else.
3 = 3

The same three, leading on. Four notes two steps out, eight three steps out.
3 + √4 + ∛8 = 3 + 2 + 2 = 7

Same links, different reach. Both notes link to three others; B is drawn larger because its neighbours lead somewhere. The dashed rings are one, two and three steps out.

There is a floor and a ceiling. A note with no links keeps a minimum size, so it can still be clicked, and a very busy note stops growing, so it cannot swallow the picture. On your profile, size is counted across the whole space you are looking at, so ticking disciplines off in the gear never makes a dot shrink.

Where you will meet one

Four graphs, one engine

CONNECTIONS
Knowledge graph

All notesFilter nodes

In Branchspace. Everything, private too.

On your profile. Yours to arrange; public notes to a visitor.

Habit

Under a published note. The note and its public neighbours.

/graph

The Graph page. The press's own essays.

Four graphs, one engine. They differ in which notes they draw and who may see them, never in how they are read.

In Branchspace

The graph button on the far-left rail opens the knowledge graph: every note you have, public and private. Above it:

All notes: Everything, across all your spaces.
Current space: Only the space of the note you have open.
Local neighbourhood: The open note and what is near it, with a depth of 1°, 2° or 3° (see below).
Filter nodes: Type part of a title to keep only the notes that match.

CONNECTIONS
Knowledge graph

Local neighbourhood2°Filter nodes

All notesCurrent spaceLocal neighbourhood ✓

1
The scope. All notes, the current space, or the neighbourhood of the note you have open.
2
The depth. Appears only for the neighbourhood: 1°, 2° or 3° out from the open note.
3
The filter. Type part of a title; notes that do not match step back.

Above Branchspace's graph. Choosing Local neighbourhood brings the depth beside it.

Templates never appear in it. They are tools, not writing.

On your profile

Your profile carries the graph of your writing. Opened by you, it is your working graph. Its gear holds your own controls (see below), and its lines are your links.

A visitor sees your public notes only, and no private note leaves a trace. The lines a visitor sees are drawn differently. Their graph does not read your notes' text, so it joins notes that share a tag instead of notes that link.

You. Five notes, joined by the links you wrote. The private one is there, because it is yours.

A visitor. Four public notes, joined where they share a tag. Sleep is not dimmed or hidden: it is simply not there.

Habit: psychology, memory
Forgetting: psychology, memory
The Commons: economics, ethics
Trust: ethics
Sleep: psychology, and private

The same notes, seen twice. Habit links to The Commons in your writing, but the two share no tag, so a visitor sees no line between them. Habit and Forgetting share two tags and still get one line.

Under a published note

A published note's page draws its own small graph: the note, and your other public notes it links to or that link to it.

The Graph page

/graph, in the site's header, is the press's own essays: each dot an essay, coloured by its first hashtag and sized by how many other essays point to it. Click one to read it.

Depth

How far out from one note to look

A large graph is easier to think with in pieces. Depth keeps one note in the centre and shows only what is near it:

Depth. Each ring is one more link away from the note you are standing on.

1°: The note and every note it touches directly.
2°: Those, and every note they touch.
3°: One step further again.
All: Everything, with no centre. On the profile graph only.

On the profile graph, depth is in the gear. In Branchspace, choose Local neighbourhood and a depth appears beside it. Borrowed notes obey depth like any other.

Making your own graph say what you mean

On your profile, as its owner

Choose a colour

Colours are handed out from sixteen house colours, in the alphabetical order of your disciplines: the first discipline gets the first colour, the second the second, and so on. That is why adding a discipline can shift the others. A new one that sorts early takes a colour from the one after it, and every discipline after that moves along one.

Todaythree disciplines

biologyhistoryphilosophy

You add artnothing pinned

artbiologyhistoryphilosophy

You add artthe three pinned first

biologyhistoryphilosophyart

Why colours move, and how a pin stops it. Art sorts before biology, so it takes gold and every other discipline shifts along; the names that moved are lettered in colour. With the three pinned, they keep their colours and art gets the first colour nobody holds.

To fix a colour in place, pin it: click its swatch in the legend and choose. A pinned discipline keeps its colour whatever you add later. The rest are handed out from the colours left over. The choice is saved to your profile and holds everywhere: in Branchspace, for visitors, and in anything you download.

biologyhistoryphilosophy

Click a colour to recolour a branch. Choose which branches show in Graph settings.

1
The legend. On your own profile graph, each swatch is a button.
2
The sixteen. The house colours, the current one ringed. Choose one and the discipline is pinned to it.

Pinning a colour. Click the swatch, then the colour.

Narrow it down

The gear holds your depth, as it does for everyone, and three controls only you see:

Graph settings

DepthAll

SpaceAll spaces

TagsChoose all Unchoose all

3 economicsethicspsychologywriting

Show borrowed notes 4

1
Depth. For everyone: All, or 1°, 2° or 3° from the note in the centre.
2
Space. One space, or all of them.
3
Tags. Tick the disciplines to show. Choose all and Unchoose all sit above. Showing one discipline on its own isolates that branch of your thinking.
4
Show borrowed notes. Hide or show the grey essays your branches grew from. Appears once you have a branch.

The gear, opened on your own profile. Here only psychology is ticked.

Everything ticked.

Psychology only. The red branch alone, and the lines inside it. Habit is as large as it was.

Isolating a branch. Lines to notes you have hidden go with them; sizes stay as they were.

Keeping one

The round buttons on a graph

1 2 3 4

SVG vectorPNG imagePDF document

1
The eye. Hides the legend and the explanation, for a clean picture. Press again to bring them back.
2
Full screen. The graph alone, filling the screen. Esc brings the page back.
3
Download. As an SVG (sharp at any size), a PNG image, or a PDF, drawn exactly as it is on screen.
4
The gear. Graph settings: depth, and on your own profile, space and tags.

The round buttons, top right of a graph, with Download open.

A tidy picture for a talk or a book. Isolate the branch you mean, choose a depth, press the eye to clear the legend away, then download it as an SVG. What you get is what was on screen, without the controls.

Where to go next

The other guides

Using Branchspace — writing notes and the links that draw all of this.
Publishing, and being read — which notes a visitor's graph can see.
Templates — starting a note from a shape you already like.

All guides

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Last checked against the site on 25 September 2026