Workboards

Workboards are where everything comes together. They're the visual canvases where your architecture lives — interactive, queryable, and always connected to real data.

A workboard isn't a static diagram. It's a living workspace backed by nodes, edges, sources, and AI analysis. Every workspace gets one automatically — the Root Board — and you create more as needed.

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. Boards connected to a repo behave 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 a layout that controls how content is arranged:

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.

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. Folders come in four flavors:

Create folders from the sidebar, then drag boards to organize them.

Permissions

Every board has access controls:

Boards also have a general access setting — organization-wide (everyone in the org can see it) or private (only explicitly granted users).

Publishing permissions

Publishing a board is separate from editing. Published boards have their own visibility model: public, unlisted, or protected (with password). See Publishing Boards and Permissions & Access Control for full details.

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