# The Cartographer interface

> A tour of the Cartographer interface, including the sidebar, chat box, and the additional panels available inside a project.

## Title bar

- **Product switcher**: Move between Assistant, Delegate, and Cartographer.
- **Notifications**: The bell icon shows updates on your business processes and delegated tasks.

## Sidebar (left)

- **New business process**: Start a new business process — the fastest way in, at the top of the sidebar.
- **Search**: Find a past business process or task.
- **Review another project**: Open a project someone shared with you for review, as a reviewer rather than the owner.
- **Business processes**: Your list of business processes, each producing a PDD and, once approved, an SDD.
- **Business tasks**: A lighter-weight list, powered by the **Task Design** skill instead of Business Analysis, for capturing a single linear task — from a description or one recording, in a single session — as a 5-section Task Design Document (TDD) rather than a full PDD. See [Business process versus business task](your-first-cartographer-tasks.md#business-process-versus-business-task) in Your first Cartographer tasks.
- **Recents**: Your most recently opened items.
- **Add-ons & Integrations**, **Account**: Manage connected tools and your profile.

## Chat box

The main view offers a chat box to name a process and describe how it runs today, plus quick actions — **Document AS-IS**, **Create recording**, and **Show more ideas** — and a set of suggested process and task ideas to start from.

![Cartographer home view, showing the sidebar with New business process, Business Processes, and Business Tasks, the chat box to name a process and describe how it runs today, and a set of suggested process and task ideas below it](https://dev-assets.cms.uipath.com/assets/images/cartographer/cartographer-home-screen-86f38a68.webp)

The chat box has **Approval mode** and the model picker. Selecting the attach (+) icon offers **Attach files**, **Routines** (browse and run a saved routine), and commands such as `/usage` and `/goal`.

Once you're inside a project, the chat box also shows **Guarded mode** (off by default): "Uses allowed files & folders only." Turn it on to restrict Cartographer to the files and folders listed in the **Allowlist** tab of Project settings.

## Inside a project

Opening a business process narrows the sidebar to that process's own navigation:

- **New Chat**, **Conversations** (with a **New Task** entry)
- **Progress**: The stage tracker for this business process — see [How Cartographer works](introduction.md#how-cartographer-works).
- **Resources**, **Knowledge** (with **Index** and **Stakeholders** sub-pages), **Settings**

Once the business process has gone through its full documentation flow (through Handoff), five more items appear:

- **Current Process**: The confirmed AS-IS state, expandable into **Steps** (one sub-page per documented step), **Business Rules**, **Compliance**, **Data Inputs Outputs**, **Diagram**, **Exception Handling**, **Metrics**, **Overview**, **Pain Points**, **Scheduling and Triggers**, and **Scope**.
- **Future Design**: The confirmed TO-BE state, expandable into **Steps** (one sub-page per step), **Benefits**, **Business Rules**, **Delivery Model**, **Diagram**, **Exception Handling**, **Overview**, and **Seeds**.
- **Diagrams**: Both flowcharts together, with an **AS-IS** / **TO-BE** toggle and a **Revise diagram** option.
- **Process design (PDD)** and **Solution design (SDD)**: The generated documents themselves, each with its own **Download** button — a permanent way back into them alongside the Outputs panel.

Before the process reaches that point, use **Progress** to see how far along it is.

The chat box gains **Document AS-IS**, **Create from recording**, and **Attach recording** as quick actions.

### Checklist

The Checklist panel tracks how ready your business process is to move forward, grouped into **FACTS (AS-IS)** and **ANALYSIS (TO-BE)** categories, each item marked pending, confirmed, or needing attention. A **Needs your attention** callout surfaces whichever categories have open items.

### Project panel (right)

- **Stakeholders**: People involved in the project and their roles, plus any questions raised for teammates through [Delegating a task](delegating-a-task.md).
- **Project instructions**: The guidance Cartographer follows for this business process — pre-filled with a default goal — capture the AS-IS (Current Process) state, design the TO-BE (Future Design) state, and generate the PDD — that you can edit.
- **Skills**: The skills enabled for this business process — by default, **Business Analysis**, **project-checklist**, and **Knowledge Base**.

### Knowledge

- **Index**: The ingested knowledge base for this business process, and whether any sources have been added yet.
- **Stakeholders**: The same stakeholder list as the project panel, stored as a structured file you can view directly.

## Project settings

Select the gear icon in the sidebar to open Project settings, with three tabs:

| Tab | Contains |
|---|---|
| **Basics** | Name, Project instructions, an optional **Project rules (agents.md)** file (rules the agent always follows in this project, stored on your computer, applied to new sessions only), Context files, and Approval mode |
| **Allowlist** | The local files and folders Cartographer may use while **Guarded mode** is on, plus project resources (linked external files that stay in sync with their source) |
| **Skills** | The skills enabled for this business process |

## Next steps

Continue to [Your first Cartographer tasks](your-first-cartographer-tasks.md) to prepare for your first session.