Canonical Timeline User Guide

Welcome to the Canonical Timeline user guide. This documentation covers everything you need to work with timelines, events, claims, sources, entities, and investigation tools.

Quick Navigation

Getting Started

This section walks you through your first session — from login to a completed investigation.

1. Create Your Account

Navigate to /register to create an account. You will need:

• A display name (visible to other members of your account)
• An email address
• A password

After registration, check your email for a verification code. Enter it at /verify to activate your account.

If you were invited by an existing account, use the invitation link provided to you. Invitation-based registration auto-assigns you to that account with the role specified by the inviter.

2. Your First Login

After verification, log in at /login. You will land on the home page, which shows:

• A list of timelines in your account (empty for new accounts)
• An Account Switcher in the top header (if you belong to multiple accounts)
• A left sidebar with navigation links

The sidebar is divided into three sections:

Navigation

• Workspace — Review queues, reconciliation, and activity feed
• Timelines — Your investigation containers
• Entities — Named actors (people, organizations, etc.)
• Sources — Reference documents
• Search — Full-text search across all data

Tools

• Investigation — Timeline comparison and map tools
• Type Management — Custom type taxonomies for your account

Documentation

• Documentation — This user guide
• Developer API — MCP configuration and REST API reference (requires Professional or Enterprise tier)

If your account has demo datasets enabled, you will see pre-populated timelines like "Apollo 11 Mission," "Watergate Investigation," or "Operation Ghost Courier." These are read-only samples that let you explore the application before creating your own data.

3. Create Your First Timeline

A timeline is the top-level container for an investigation. To create one:

1. From the home page, click the + New Timeline button.
2. In the dialog:

- Title: Give your timeline a descriptive name (e.g., "Acme Corp Investigation").
- Slug: A URL-safe identifier generated automatically from the title. You can edit it.
- Status: Choose the current phase:
- fact-finding — Still gathering information
- verification — Actively verifying claims
- ongoing — Investigation is in progress
- resolved — Investigation is complete
- Summary: An optional description of what this timeline covers.

1. Click Create.

You will be taken to the timeline detail page, which is empty at first.

4. Add Your First Event

On the timeline detail page:

1. Click the + Event button in the toolbar, or press N.
2. In the dialog:

- Title: A concise name for the event (e.g., "Board meeting at HQ").
- Canonical Time: The date and time of the event. You can be specific or approximate.
- Time Precision: How certain you are about the time:
- exact — You know the precise time
- estimated_date_time — Approximate but you have a specific estimate
- exact_time_period_range — Known range with certain bounds
- estimated_time_period_range — Estimated range
- Description: Context and details about the event.
- Status: The verification status (e.g., reported, confirmed, alleged).

1. Click Create.

The event appears as a card in the timeline sequence. Cards display the event title, status badge, time, and a precision indicator.

5. Add a Claim to Your Event

Claims are factual assertions attributed to sources. Every claim must cite a source.

1. Expand an event card by clicking it, or press Enter when it is selected.
2. Click + Add Claim on the expanded card.
3. In the dialog:

- Claim Text: The factual assertion (e.g., "The CEO was present at the board meeting").
- Source: Search for and select an existing source, or create a new one inline.
- Status: The current verification grade:
- rumored — Unverified, heard through informal channels
- reported — Reported but not yet assessed
- unverifiable — Cannot be verified
- verifiable — Can be verified based on available evidence
- fact — Verified as accurate
- Confidence: A score from 0 to 100 indicating how confident you are in this claim.

1. Click Create.

6. Create a Source

If you need to create a source before adding a claim:

1. Navigate to Sources in the sidebar.
2. Click + New Source.
3. In the dialog:

- Title: The source document's name.
- Source Type: Choose from 175+ types (e.g., news_article, court_document, intelligence_report).
- Author: Who created or published the source.
- Publication Date: When it was published.
- URL: A link to the source if it exists online.

1. Click Create.

You can return to the event and assign claims to this source.

7. Link Entities

Entities represent the people, organizations, and objects involved in your investigation.

1. From an event page, click + Link under the "Linked Entities" section.
2. Search for an existing entity or create a new one:

- Canonical Name: The full, official name (e.g., "John D. Rockefeller").
- Aliases: Alternative names they are known by.
- Entity Type: Choose from 170+ types (e.g., person, corporation, government_agency).

1. Click Link.

Entities can also be linked to each other via relationships (e.g., "works for," "owns," "reports to").

8. Review Your Work

Navigate to the Workspace (sidebar > Workspace). The Review Queue tab surfaces gaps in your data:

• Events Without Claims — Events that lack evidence
• Low Confidence Claims — Claims with confidence below 50%
• Orphan Entities — Entities not linked to any event
• Pending Status Review — Claims that may need their status updated

Work through these queues to ensure every event has sourced claims and every claim has been evaluated.

9. Export Your Investigation

From the timeline detail page, click CSV or JSON in the toolbar to download a structured export of your timeline. These exports include events, claims, sources, and entity references — suitable for sharing, archiving, or feeding into other tools.

Conventions in This Guide

• Bold text indicates UI elements: buttons, labels, field names, dialog titles.
• <kbd> tags indicate keyboard keys and shortcuts.
• > Blockquotes indicate important notes or warnings.
• Screenshots are referenced by filename. These live in public/screenshots/ and may be referred to as screenshot-name.png throughout the guide.
• Paths like "sidebar > Entities" mean: click the Entities link in the left sidebar.

Next: Core Concepts →