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The Board

Your scenes as index cards on a big, pannable canvas — the place to rearrange the shape of your story by feel.

The board (also called the corkboard) is Nabu's wall of index cards. Every scene in your screenplay shows up as a card, laid out left to right in story order. You can drag cards around, group them, sort them into the parts of a story, add a new card, or open a scene and ask Nisaba to write it. It's the view to reach for when you want to feel the whole shape of the story instead of scrolling through pages.

To open it, click Board in the left sidebar of your project. The top bar reads Corkboard with a small amber dot and a count of how many scenes are placed (for example, 12 scenes).

Note: The board and the outline are two views of the same scenes. Reorder a card here and it reorders in the outline too — there's no separate copy to keep in sync.

Moving around the canvas

The board is an infinite canvas, so there's always room to spread out.

  • Pan (slide the view): drag any empty part of the canvas, or hold the Space key and drag.
  • Zoom: scroll your mouse wheel, pinch on a trackpad, or pinch on a touchscreen.

You won't lose anything by panning or zooming — you're just moving the camera, not the scenes.

What's on a scene card

Each card is the index card for one scene. Depending on the scene, a card can show:

  • A number strip across the top — Scene 6 (or 6A when production numbers are locked), or Unplaced for a scene you've sketched but not yet slotted into the story.
  • The scene heading in screenplay typeface (for example, INT. KITCHEN — DAY).
  • The time of day.
  • A short synopsis (up to three lines).
  • A status in the bottom corner — idea, outline, draft, and so on — so you can see at a glance how far along the scene is.
  • A thin color stripe along the bottom edge if the scene belongs to a sequence.
  • Small badges: a red dot marks a pivotal scene; a red or amber flag dot warns of something to look at (hover it to read the note); a count badge shows how many of Nisaba's suggestions are waiting on that scene.

If you've given a card a color (see Card color below), the whole card takes on that tint.

Tip: Hover a card and small move-earlier / move-later arrows appear just below it. Click them to nudge the scene one step backward or forward in the story.

The move arrows go grey when scene numbers are locked — a locked screenplay won't let the board renumber scenes out from under you.

Clicking and right-clicking a card

Freeform vs Story Zones

A toggle in the top bar lets you switch between two ways of laying out the cards. The active choice glows amber. Nabu remembers which one you used last and reopens there.

Story Zones sorts your cards into nine vertical columns, one for each stretch of a story arc:

  1. Setup
  2. Catalyst
  3. The Commitment
  4. Rising Action
  5. The Shift — Midpoint
  6. Complications
  7. Crisis
  8. Climax
  9. Resolution

Drag a card from one column to another to move that beat earlier or later in the arc. A banner at the top reminds you that Nabu reads these columns to understand your structure — so sorting cards here genuinely teaches Nabu the shape of your story.

Freeform is a free-position canvas. Drag any card anywhere and it stays put — your layout is saved exactly as you arrange it. Grouped scenes show up as soft colored boxes around their cards. Freeform is also the only mode with the Tidy button and the drawing pad (both below).

Note: Reordering or moving a card between zones is blocked when your scene numbers are locked (you'll see Scene numbers are locked). Dragging cards around in Freeform is never blocked, because it only moves the card on screen — it doesn't renumber anything.

Tip: The drawing pad, the Tidy button, and any pictures you've placed only appear in Freeform. They quietly hide when you switch to Story Zones, because that mode re-flows the cards and your sketches would drift out of place.

Grouping scenes into a sequence

A sequence is a named cluster of scenes that belong together — a heist, a road trip, a montage. Grouping them keeps related beats visually tied and gives Nabu a stronger sense of your structure.

To make one:

  1. Select two or more scene cards that sit next to each other in the same zone and aren't already in a sequence. (Click a card, then add more to the selection.)
  2. A floating + Create Sequence pill appears above your selection, with a count of how many cards you picked.
  3. Click it, type a name in the New sequence box (for example, The Heist), and click Create.

The cards are now wrapped into a sequence, shown as a tinted band with a colored label.

Note: If the cards you picked aren't an adjacent run in the same zone, Nabu can't wrap them and says Can't wrap these scenes. Grouping scenes this way doesn't reorder or renumber them, so it works even when scene numbers are locked.

The scene right-click menu

Right-click any card to open its menu. The actions are grouped:

Ask Nisaba

  • ✦ Audit placement — hands the whole board to Nisaba's structure check and marks any misplaced or pivotal scenes with flags. (See Audit Story Structure — it's the same check.)
  • ✦ Check continuity — asks Nisaba to check this scene and its recently-changed neighbors for continuity problems (timeline slips, props that vanish, characters in two places). Results land as flags on the affected cards, just like the automatic checks.

To write a scene: open the scene and ask Nisaba to write it in the chat panel — that's the one place AI scene writing lives now, so Nisaba can talk it through with you first and then tell you when it's done.

Costs credits: Audit placement and Check continuity (12 credits) ask Nisaba to do real work, so they spend credits. They're greyed out when AI is offline. Charges are approximate — current pricing is shown in the app.

Editing

  • Edit… — opens the scene popup to change the heading or synopsis.
  • Card color ▸ — tints the card with one of eight presets, or pick Default (no color) to clear it. This is just a visual label; it doesn't change the scene.
  • Move to sequence ▸ — moves the scene into one of your other sequences (and into that sequence's zone). Choose Remove from sequence to pull it back out. This appears only when there's another sequence to move into.
  • Assign zone ▸ — drops a scene at the end of one of the nine story zones. This appears only for scenes that aren't already in a sequence (a sequenced scene takes its zone from the sequence).

Going to the scene

  • Reveal in editor — jumps to the script editor with this scene in focus.

Other

  • Report a bug… — tells the Nabu team about a problem.
  • Omit scene / Restore scene — marks the scene as cut (it shows an Omitted badge) without deleting it, or brings it back.

Adding and editing a scene card

Use the + Add Scene button at the top-right of the corkboard bar (on a phone it shrinks to a +). It opens a quick Scene Sketch card where you type a heading and a one-line synopsis, then click Add to Board to drop the new card into your story.

Clicking an existing card opens the same popup in edit mode. There you can:

  • Change the heading (always editable).
  • Edit the synopsis (editable while the scene is still an idea or outline; read-only once it's a draft, so writing isn't lost).
  • Set a card color.
  • Delete the scene (you'll be asked to confirm).
  • Hand the scene to Nisaba with Write Scene (for an idea or outline) or Re-write Scene (for a draft — you'll confirm the overwrite first).

Costs credits: Write Scene and Re-write Scene ask Nisaba to draft the full scene, so they spend credits. The progress shows on the bar at the top of the board, and it picks up truthfully even if you refresh the page.

Note: A scene card is a single notecard — there's no "branch" or "variant" feature. What you sketch is the one card for that scene.

Drawing and pinning pictures (Freeform only)

In Freeform mode you get two extra tools at the top-right:

  • ✦ Tidy — re-packs your cards into a clean, non-overlapping layout when things get messy.
  • Draw — toggles a drawing pad over the canvas. When it's on, the button turns amber and reads Drawing — click to stop. The pad pans and zooms locked to your cards, so your notes stay with the scenes they're next to.

The pad gives you pen color swatches and widths, plus a row of tools: Select (move or resize a placed picture), Pen, Eraser, Text (click to drop a label), Rectangle, Ellipse, Line, Arrow, and Image (place a picture as a backdrop). There's also Undo for your last stroke and Clear (which asks Clear all? Yes / No first). Everything you draw is saved with the project.

Note: You can place PNG, JPEG, WebP, and GIF pictures. If an upload can't go through, Nabu tells you exactly why — the file's too big, the wrong type, or you've hit your project's picture limit.

Tip: Drawing only lives in Freeform. If you switch to Story Zones, drawing mode turns off and your ink hides until you come back — it isn't deleted.

Audit Story Structure

When you're in Story Zones mode, a floating ✦ Audit Story Structure button sits at the top-right. Click it and Nisaba reads how your scenes are spread across the nine zones, then flags scenes that look misplaced, zones that are empty, and gaps where a pivotal beat might be missing. While it works, the button reads Auditing…, and the flags land right on the cards when it finishes.

This is the same check as Audit placement in the right-click menu — both run the whole board at once.

Costs credits: The audit asks Nisaba to analyze your structure, so it spends credits and is greyed out when AI is offline. It only appears in Story Zones, since judging where a scene sits in the arc has no meaning against free-floating Freeform positions.

Good to know

  • The board and the outline stay in sync. Reorder, move, or omit a scene here and the same change shows up on the Temporal page, and vice versa. There's no second copy.
  • Card color and omitting don't touch your script — color is just a label, and omitting hides a scene without deleting its text.
  • You may occasionally see review chips or a deletion prompt. When Nisaba proposes a structural change (suggesting where a scene belongs, or noticing that a grouped sequence's scenes have vanished from the script), a small Seq chip or a flagged for deletion prompt can appear so you can confirm or keep things as they are. These show up only when there's a proposal to review — most of the time you won't see them.