Status Workflow

Every idea in NeuralRepo has a status that represents where it is in your workflow. There are five statuses, and an idea is always in exactly one of them.

The Five Statuses

Captured

A raw idea, just saved. No evaluation or refinement has happened yet. This is the default status for every new idea regardless of how it was captured.

Exploring

You are actively researching or fleshing out this idea. It has caught your attention and you are evaluating its potential, gathering references, or sketching out requirements.

Building

Development is in progress. You have committed to this idea and are actively working on turning it into something real — writing code, designing screens, drafting content.

Shipped

Completed and launched. The idea has been realized and is live, published, or otherwise done.

Shelved

Parked for later. This is not the same as abandoned — a shelved idea is one you may come back to when the timing is right or when priorities shift.

Tip

Statuses are not strictly sequential. You can move an idea from any status to any other status. Jump straight from captured to building if you are ready, or move a shipped idea back to exploring if you want to iterate on it.

Note

Capture forms only offer the first three — captured, exploring, and building — since an idea you are still writing down has not shipped or been shelved. Every other surface accepts all five.

Kanban Board

The Board view is a drag-and-drop kanban board where each column represents a status. Drag an idea card from one column to another to change its status instantly.

The kanban board shows idea titles, tags (with custom colors), and a truncated body preview. Click any card to open the full idea detail view.

Changing Status

Web

• Kanban board: Drag the idea card to the target column.
• Idea detail: Click the status badge and select a new status from the dropdown.

CLI

# Move a single idea to a new status
nrepo move <id> <status>

# Examples
nrepo move 42 exploring
nrepo move 18 shipped

API

curl -X PATCH https://neuralrepo.com/api/v1/ideas/42 \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NREPO_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"status": "exploring"}'

Valid values: captured, exploring, building, shipped, shelved.

Bulk Status Changes

Move multiple ideas to the same status in a single command.

# Move ideas 1, 2, and 3 to "building"
nrepo move building --ids 1,2,3

In the web app, tick the checkbox on each idea in the Ideas list, then choose a status from the bulk toolbar that appears. Bulk moves are applied one idea at a time and reported per idea — a failure on one does not roll back the others — with a maximum of 50 ideas per request.

Filtering by Status

Filter your idea list to show only ideas in a particular status.

Web

Use the status filter in the sidebar, or simply look at the relevant kanban column.

CLI

# List all ideas with a specific status
nrepo log --status exploring

# Combine with tag filter
nrepo log --status building --tag ai

API

GET /api/v1/ideas?status=exploring

Status Reference

Status	Default for new ideas	Typical next step
captured	Yes	exploring or shelved
exploring	No	building or shelved
building	No	shipped or shelved
shipped	No	Terminal, or back to exploring
shelved	No	exploring when revisited

Note

There is no “deleted” status. Deleting an idea archives it: it disappears from lists, search, and the graph, and its vector is removed so it stops influencing search and duplicate detection — but the row is retained. Shelving is the softer alternative: shelved ideas stay in your repository and remain searchable, and are only skipped when comparing a new idea for duplicates.

Status Everywhere Else

• Stale ideas — an idea left in captured past your staleness threshold (default 30 days) surfaces in the Review queue and in the weekly digest. Moving it on, or pressing Keep, resets the clock.
• The mind map colours every node by status and can filter the graph down to one.
• Auto-created ideas land in exploring, not captured: the agent’s synthesize_ideas and draft_document both produce worked-on ideas rather than raw ones.

Next Steps

Review Queue Where ideas that stopped moving come back to your attention.

Tags The other axis of organization — and how bulk tagging works.

Mind Map Status as colour: read progress across the whole graph at a glance.

nrepo move Single and bulk status changes from the terminal.