# The Cartographer interface

> A tour of the Cartographer interface, including the sidebar, chat box, business process workspace, checklist, and project settings.

Cartographer shares its title bar and product switcher with Delegate, but the rest of its interface is its own — built around a business process or business task instead of an open-ended conversation.

## Title bar

Move between Assistant, Delegate, and Cartographer from the same switcher described in [The Delegate interface](the-delegate-interface.md).

## Home view

- **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](getting-started-with-cartographer.md#business-process-versus-business-task) in Getting started.
- **Recents**: Your most recently opened items.
- **Add-ons & Integrations**, **Account**: Same as in Delegate.

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.

## Chat box

Cartographer's chat box is simpler than Delegate's: it has **Approval mode** and the model picker, but no execution mode toggle — that's a Delegate-specific control that doesn't apply here. 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 business process, 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 business process

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

- **New Chat**, **Checklist**, **Conversations** (with a **New Task** entry)
- **Progress**: The stage tracker for this business process — see [How it works](cartographer-overview.md#how-it-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.

### 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.

## 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 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 [Getting started with Cartographer](getting-started-with-cartographer.md) to prepare for your first session.