Boards

A board is where everything comes together — the visual canvas your architecture lives on, interactive and connected to real data.

A board isn't a static diagram. It's backed by nodes, edges, bound sources, and the insight runs that analyse them. Every workspace gets one automatically — the Root Board — and you create more as you need them.

This page is the concept: what a board is, the types, the layer model, and where opening one takes you. For the click-by-click of creating and configuring one, see the Boards Guide.

Board types

You get ten board types, each designed for a different architectural concern:

The Root Board

Every workspace gets a Root Board automatically. It's the top-level overview that aggregates all elements across the workspace — your system's "home screen." You can't delete it, but you can customize it like any other board.

Where you land

Most boards open straight onto the canvas. A board connected to a repo behaves differently: an app board opens on its hub — intents, insights, aspects, and skills next to the diagram. A Root Board whose layers contain app boards opens on the command center — one tile per app, with totals across all of them. Either way, the canvas is one click away.

Layout modes

Every board has one of two layouts, and it decides how the board reads:

• Dashboard — a grid, sized to a width preset. Best for Root Boards, system overviews, and anything you'll project on a wall.
• Page — a vertical, scrollable column. Best for ADRs, Knowledge Base articles, and reports.

Pick it when you create the board and change it later without losing content. The presets for each, and the section templates that arrange content inside them, are in the Boards Guide.

Layers (nested boards)

Boards can be nested. A node on a parent board can link to a child layer board for drill-down navigation — click a service node to see its internal components.

This creates a natural zoom-in/zoom-out navigation — you move between L0 overview boards and L1/L2 detail boards with a single click. The Board Tree covers the whole structure: what each level carries, how the board map moves you around it, and where app boards are allowed to sit.

Creating layers

You can create a layer board in two ways:

• From the UI — right-click a node and select Create Subsystem Layer. The node gets a drill-down indicator; clicking it navigates to the child board.
• From a plugin — the ContextDX plugins (Cdx Code, Cdx Work) build the layer hierarchy board by board: each push targets one board, and /sync walks the tree pushing each layer in turn, with parent-child links pre-wired. Plugins can only create child layer boards — the root board is always created in the UI. If a push references a child layer that doesn't exist yet, the platform creates a placeholder for it, so push order never matters. See Boards API for the payload shape.

Organizing with folders

Boards live inside folders within a workspace, and folders nest as deep as you need. Workspaces & Organizations covers the folder types and what each holds.

Permissions

A board carries its own access on top of your organization role: it's either open to everyone in the org or private to the people you name, and publishing it is a separate decision again. Permissions & Access is the one place all three layers are explained together.

Verify your board setup

After creating a board, confirm everything is working:

• Board appears in the sidebar under the correct folder
• Layout mode matches your intent (dashboard vs page)
• At least one source is bound (for source-backed boards)
• You can add a node and position it on the canvas
• Permissions are set appropriately for your team

What's next