Your notes don’t need another folder.

An outliner lets you put one thought inside another. The useful part is what happens later: you can move a whole branch, fold away the detail, or make room for an idea that has grown beyond its first sentence.

In Integrity, that structure runs through the workspace. Documents, text, canvas objects, and sections belong to the same tree. You can start small without deciding which separate app the thought will eventually need.

Start with a question, not a filing system

Imagine you are planning a community workshop. Your first note is “What would make this useful?” Under it, put three possible answers: a short demonstration, time to try something, and help from another person.

Under “time to try something,” add the practical details. What should participants bring? What could they finish in twenty minutes? What might get in their way?

You now have an outline. The relationship between the ideas is visible in their nesting. There was no need to invent folders for strategy, events, onboarding, and facilitation before writing the first useful sentence.

One question. Room to grow.

What would make the workshop useful?

• A short demonstration
• Time to try something
  • What should people bring?
  • What could they finish?
• Help from another person

Move the thought with its context

Suppose the short demonstration belongs inside the hands-on exercise. Move that branch. Its supporting notes come with it, so you do not have to reconstruct which explanation belonged to which heading.

Collapse details when you need to see the whole plan. Expand a branch when you are ready to work on it. This is useful for editing your own thinking, not just organizing finished material.

There is a limit: very deep nesting can hide decisions. If you have to open six levels to find the actual next step, flatten the structure. Put the decision near the top and keep its evidence underneath.

Choose a view for the question

Some work reads best as a document. Some needs space: a canvas can put a plan beside references and working notes. A database gives repeated items properties, such as owner and status.

These views have different purposes. You do not need to turn every paragraph into a database record. Use a database when you want to ask the same question of many items; use a document when the order of the argument matters.

A presentation is another reading of structured content. It asks what an audience needs to see, one idea at a time. The underlying material can remain editable rather than disappearing into a collection of disconnected screenshots.

Give AI the relevant branch

A connected workspace makes it easier to point an assistant at the material you mean. Mention the relevant document or node and give it a clear task: find contradictions, propose an agenda, or turn agreed decisions into a checklist.

Ask it to preserve open questions as open questions. An organized outline is still a draft, and an assistant should not silently turn a possibility into a promise.

Keep the structure light

For your next project, begin with three branches: what we know, what we are deciding, and what happens next. Add detail where the work needs it.

If you want a concrete example, plan a launch with a brief and a board. The test of a structure is whether it helps someone continue the work—not how impressive it looks when every branch is expanded.