Relationships

Folders say where something lives. Relationships say how it connects to things that live elsewhere: the implementation that answers a requirement, the version that replaced a draft, the feedback on a release.

Four types

Every relationship has one of four types and a required reason.

Relationships have a direction. "Requirements V2 supersedes Requirements" shows on V2 as supersedes and on the original as superseded by.

Either end can be a document or a folder, so "Client feedback responds to the Release 1 folder" works too.

Drawing one

• Drag a document or folder onto another document.
• Or use Connect to… on either item.

Pick the type, write the reason, save. Dropping onto a folder moves the item instead; dropping onto a document relates them.

AI-suggested relationships

When you add or change a document, Filement compares it with the rest of the workspace and suggests the specific connections it finds: a newer version, a reply, a citation. Suggestions are marked as AI-suggested, sit in their own section of a document's insights, show dashed in the knowledge graph, and carry a confidence score. Hover a suggestion to see the score, or read it under the suggestion on a touch screen. Filement learns the score from what people in your workspace kept and turned down before, not only from the model's own guess.

The AI doesn't suggest plain related to links. Documents from the same piece of work go into the same thread instead (below), which says it once for all of them.

For each suggestion you can:

• Keep this connection, which makes it your relationship. It remembers it began as a suggestion.
• Dismiss it, which removes it and stops the same pair being suggested again.
• Leave it. It stays a suggestion until later reading contradicts it.

Relationships that AI tools create over MCP count as AI-suggested too, even though they arrive under your account, because a model decided them.

Threads, versions and Activity

Filement keeps three things up to date on its own, so a workspace gets easier to read as it grows.

Versions. Copies, re-downloads such as plan(1).md, drafts, and v1/v2 of one document form a family with one current version. When the text proves it, the family shows as one card on the board ("3 versions") with the older ones tucked behind it. When it's only the AI's reading, older versions stay visible, greyed, with "Newer: …". Versions… in an item's menu lists them, and Not the same document separates one for good.

Threads. A thread is one piece of work across documents and folders: the request, the spec, the status reports, the reply, the decisions, the plan. It has its own page with a dated timeline, where the work stands, what was decided and what is still open. On that page, hover a document to see what it's connected to, and click "answers …" to jump to the document it names. Click a decision or an open question to go to the document it came from. Hovering a card anywhere outlines everything in its thread and family. A folder's Brief lists the threads in it. A thread never mixes documents from areas with different access.

Activity. Activity lists every change the AI makes, and every change something makes on your behalf, in plain words and in groups. A group is one connected agent's working session (its changes until it has been idle for half an hour), one conversation with the assistant, one upload or file saved from chat, or one reading of a document. Undo all (just Undo on a group of one) takes a whole group back, newest change first, so a chain unwinds in order. Say an agent made a folder, moved files into it and edited one: the edit is reverted, the files move back, and the folder goes to Trash. You can undo any single change on its own too. A change someone has touched since stays as it is, and the list says so. Undoing never loses anything: created items go to Trash, and edits come back as a new version.

Connected items stack together

When you connect two things that sit in the same folder, they collapse onto one card there: a small pile with a count, so you can see the connection while you're just browsing.

Click the pile to open its route view. The pile lifts into a panel where it stands and reads top to bottom. Each connection gets its own line with the type in its colour, the reason whoever drew it wrote, and the item it leads to. It reads oldest first: the original document, then what superseded or answered it, then whatever came from that. So each line is labelled the way you read it. The spec is "answered by" the implementation, even if you drew the connection as "responds to" from the other end.

Connections chain, and they branch. A line runs from each item to the one it leads to, in the relationship's colour, with the label hanging off it. A chain runs straight down one column; where two things came out of the same item, each branch is indented under it. The route view is the only way a stack is shown, because it's the only view that shows both the shape and the reasons.

The page behind dims while the panel is open. A press anywhere outside closes it, and so does Escape. From the panel you can open any item or use its menu as anywhere else, and Open in the graph hands a tangled one to the knowledge graph, which has pan, zoom and filters. Drag a member out onto an empty slot on the board to separate it again; the connection stays.

Connecting to something inside a stack

Drag a file onto a stack and hold for a moment. The route view opens while you're still dragging, and dropping on any row connects to that item. That's how you link to something in the middle of a chain, not just to the card on top.

Where you see them

• In the folder itself. Connected items stack onto one card that opens to the route view.
• In a document's insights. Relationships people added come first, with AI suggestions in a separate section below.
• In the knowledge graph. Every connection in the workspace or one project, solid for people and dashed for AI. See below.
• For agents. MCP tools return the two groups separately. See Tools.

The knowledge graph

Open it from the sidebar. It draws the connections in the workspace, solid for connections people added and dashed for ones Filement suggested, with an arrowhead for the directional ones. Lines are grey until you point at or select an item. Then that item's lines show in the colour of their relationship type.

Filement groups what it already knows belongs together, so the graph stays readable as it adds connections:

• Versions of one document are one card. Drafts, copies and earlier versions stack behind the newest one, and the card says how many there are ("3 versions"). Connections to any of them are drawn to that card. Select it to see the versions and how each connection reached it. To see every version as its own card, switch Current to All versions.
• A thread is a shaded area. The documents in one thread sit together inside an area labelled with the thread's name. Click the name to see where the thread stands, what's open and what was decided. Double-click it to open the thread. Drag the name to move the whole thread.
• Zoom out and the threads take over. When cards get too small to read, each thread shows its name in large type and a single line joins two threads, labelled with how many connections run between them.
• Lines that repeat something are hidden until you look. A "related to" link between two documents in the same thread says the same thing as the thread. A chain of "supersedes" links already says the oldest version was replaced. Those lines appear when you point at or select one of their items.

Filement works the layout out from the connections themselves, and it's the same every time you open the same workspace, so you can find things where they were last time. Re-arrange moves everything, and so does switching between Current and All versions. Dragging a card moves just that card. Filtering never moves anything.

To narrow it down:

• Find in graph (or press /) lights up items whose name matches and fades the rest.
• Types and People / Suggested take whole classes of connection off the canvas.
• Projects appears when the workspace has more than one. A connection stays on screen if either end is in the project you picked, so links that leave the project stay visible.

Click an item to focus it. Everything more than one hop away fades, and the canvas frames the neighbourhood. The panel on the right lists that item's connections with the reason someone gave for each, who added it, and, for suggestions, how confident Filement is. Accept or dismiss a suggestion right there. Use the 1 / 2 / 3 control to widen the focus to two or three hops.

Double-click an item, press Enter, or use Open to go to it. Esc clears the focus. Right-click any item for the usual Rename, Move, Connect and Trash.