Idea Relations

Relations let you express how ideas connect to each other. Every relation has a source, a target, a type, and an optional note. Together, they form a directed graph that you can explore in the mind map or via the CLI.

Relation Types

NeuralRepo supports six relation types. Each serves a distinct purpose.

Type	Direction	Meaning
related	A → B	General connection. A and B are conceptually related.
parent	A → B	Hierarchical. A is the parent of B. Use this to break large ideas into sub-ideas.
blocks	A → B	A blocks progress on B. B cannot move forward until A is resolved.
inspires	A → B	A inspired the creation of B. A seed that grew into something new.
duplicate	A → B	A is a duplicate of B. Yours to create by hand — duplicate detection does not use it.
supersedes	A → B	A replaces B. The newer idea makes the older one obsolete.

Note

Relations are directional — A blocks B is not the same as B blocks A. The source is always the idea performing the action, and the target is the idea being acted upon.

Creating Relations

Caution

Creating, editing, and deleting relations requires Pro, on every surface. Free accounts can read the graph — the detail panel, the mind map, nrepo links, nrepo graph, GET /api/v1/map — but the write endpoints return 403 pro_required, the MCP link_ideas and unlink_ideas tools refuse, and the mind map’s editing gestures are disabled.

Web

Open an idea and click + Add Relation in the relations panel. Select the target idea, choose a relation type, and optionally add a note explaining the connection.

CLI

# Link two ideas with a relation
nrepo link <source> <target> --type <type> --note "optional explanation"

# Examples
nrepo link 10 42 --type blocks --note "Need auth system before dashboard"
nrepo link 5 18 --type parent
nrepo link 3 7 --type inspires --note "The API idea grew out of this"

API

curl -X POST https://neuralrepo.com/api/v1/map/relations \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NREPO_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "source_idea_id": 10,
    "target_idea_id": 42,
    "relation_type": "blocks",
    "note": "Need auth system before dashboard"
  }'

Cycle Detection

Certain relation types enforce acyclicity to maintain a coherent graph.

Behavior	Relation Types	What happens
Hard-blocked	blocks, parent	Cycles are rejected outright. You cannot create a relation that would form a loop.
Soft-blocked	supersedes	Cycles are rejected unless overridden with --force.
Not checked	related, inspires, duplicate	No cycle detection — these types are non-hierarchical.

Cycle checking walks up to 50 hops along edges of the same type, so it catches long chains, not just direct loops. To override a soft-blocked cycle:

# CLI
nrepo link 3 7 --type supersedes --force

# API
POST /api/v1/map/relations?force=true

Note

A duplicate relation is not part of the duplicate-detection workflow — detections are resolved by merging or dismissing, and never produce this relation type. Use it when you want to record that two ideas are the same thing without merging them.

Viewing Relations

CLI

# List all relations for an idea
nrepo links <id>

# Explore the graph from a starting idea
nrepo graph <id>

# Limit depth and filter by type
nrepo graph <id> --depth 3 --type blocks,inspires

Web

The idea detail view shows a Relations panel listing all incoming and outgoing relations. Click any related idea to navigate to it.

For a visual overview, open the Mind Map to see ideas as nodes and relations as edges.

API

# Get the full graph
GET /api/v1/map

# Response includes nodes and edges
{
  "nodes": [...],
  "edges": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "source": 10,
      "target": 42,
      "type": "blocks",
      "note": "Need auth system before dashboard",
      "score": null,
      "created_at": "2026-03-20T14:30:00Z"
    }
  ]
}

Auto-Created Relations

NeuralRepo creates some relations for you. They are marked as system-created, which the mind map draws fainter and thinner than the ones you make yourself.

• Similarity: when a newly saved idea scores above the related threshold (default 0.5) against one of its five nearest neighbours, a related relation is created — including when the pair also crosses the dedup threshold and becomes a duplicate detection.
• Parenting: giving an idea a parent_id creates a parent relation from the child to the parent. Changing parent_id later deletes the old one and writes the new one.

Caution

Editing an idea’s title or body deletes all of its system-created relations and recomputes them from the new text. Relations you created by hand are untouched. This is also why an auto-related link you were relying on can vanish after a rewrite — recreate it by hand if it matters.

The thresholds are configurable in your user settings. See Duplicate Detection for details.

What Merging Does to Relations

Merging two ideas with nrepo merge (or POST /api/v1/ideas/:id/merge) moves the absorbed idea’s relations onto the kept idea, dropping any that would point an idea at itself. Resolving a duplicate detection does not: it archives the matched idea, and archived ideas are filtered out of every relation query, so their links simply stop appearing.

Removing Relations

CLI

nrepo unlink <source> <target>

API

DELETE /api/v1/map/relations/:id

Web

Open the idea detail, find the relation in the Relations panel, and click the remove button. On the mind map, right-click an edge and choose Remove link.

Next Steps

Mind Map See the graph these relations form — edge colours, filters, and focus mode.

Duplicate Detection Where the automatic related links come from, and how to resolve a duplicate.

Review Queue New connections land here, so you can accept or ignore them as they appear.

nrepo link Create, force, and batch relations from the terminal.