Use Cases

This document describes practical use cases for the Knowledge Platform and how each maps to platform concepts. The current release includes the Outline Module; future modules will cover additional use cases.

Outline Module Use Cases

1. Writing a Book or Long-Form Document

Context: You are writing a book, thesis, or technical specification and need to manage a large hierarchical structure of chapters, sections, and subsections.

How the Platform Helps:

Each book is an Outline graph. The hierarchy is represented as ParentOf edges:

graph TD
    Book["The Knowledge Graph Book"]
    P1["Part I: Foundations"]
    P2["Part II: Applications"]
    C1["Chapter 1: Introduction"]
    C2["Chapter 2: Graph Theory"]
    C3["Chapter 3: Case Studies"]
    S1["1.1 Motivation"]
    S2["1.2 Scope and Goals"]
    S3["2.1 Basic Definitions"]

    Book -->|ParentOf| P1
    Book -->|ParentOf| P2
    P1 -->|ParentOf| C1
    P1 -->|ParentOf| C2
    P2 -->|ParentOf| C3
    C1 -->|ParentOf| S1
    C1 -->|ParentOf| S2
    C2 -->|ParentOf| S3

Workflow:

  1. Create a workspace named after your book project.
  2. Create an outline ("The Knowledge Graph Book") — this creates the root node.
  3. Use Add Child to build the Part / Chapter / Section hierarchy.
  4. Fill in content on each node with section notes, bullet points, or drafts.
  5. Use Move to reorganise sections as your thinking evolves.
  6. Use the tree projection's flat list to export a structured table of contents.

2. Meeting Notes with Action Items

Context: You run regular team meetings and want to maintain structured notes with decisions, discussions, and action items.

How the Platform Helps:

Each meeting is an Outline graph. Top-level items are agenda sections; nested items are notes and action items.

Structure:

Sprint Planning — 2026-02-26
├── Attendees
├── Goals for Sprint 12
│   ├── Deliver authentication module
│   └── Deploy staging environment
├── Discussion: Tech Debt
│   ├── Outstanding: legacy login flow
│   └── Decision: refactor in Sprint 13
└── Action Items
    ├── Alice: write migration script by Friday
    ├── Bob: review PR #142
    └── Carol: update deployment runbook

Workflow:

  1. Create a workspace "Meeting Notes".
  2. For each meeting, create a new outline named with the date and topic.
  3. Build top-level items for each agenda section.
  4. Add child items for notes, decisions, and action items.
  5. After the meeting, update item content with outcomes.
  6. Use the flat tree list to generate a text summary for email distribution.

3. Research Note Hierarchy

Context: You are conducting research and want to organise papers, notes, quotes, and ideas in a hierarchical structure.

How the Platform Helps:

Research areas become top-level items. Papers, themes, or arguments become children. Specific observations and quotes become grandchildren.

Structure:

Knowledge Graph Research
├── Graph Databases
│   ├── Neo4j (2010)
│   │   ├── Cypher query language
│   │   └── Performance on social graphs
│   └── Amazon Neptune
│       └── AWS integration notes
├── Knowledge Representation
│   ├── RDF & OWL
│   │   ├── Triple store semantics
│   │   └── Ontology design patterns
│   └── Property Graphs
│       └── Comparison with RDF
└── Applications
    ├── Recommendation Systems
    └── Fraud Detection

Workflow:

  1. Create a workspace "PhD Research".
  2. Create one outline per research area or literature domain.
  3. Use child nodes for individual papers, themes, and sub-arguments.
  4. Store your notes and quotes in the content attribute.
  5. Use sibling position to rank items by importance or reading order.

4. Project Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)

Context: You are managing a software project and want to decompose the work into a tree of deliverables, tasks, and sub-tasks.

How the Platform Helps:

A WBS is a natural tree structure. Each deliverable is a node; sub-deliverables and tasks are children.

Structure:

Mobile App MVP
├── 1. Backend API
│   ├── 1.1 Authentication Service
│   │   ├── 1.1.1 OAuth integration
│   │   └── 1.1.2 JWT token refresh
│   ├── 1.2 Data Model
│   └── 1.3 REST Endpoints
├── 2. Mobile Client
│   ├── 2.1 iOS App
│   └── 2.2 Android App
└── 3. Infrastructure
    ├── 3.1 CI/CD Pipeline
    └── 3.2 Deployment

Workflow:

  1. Create a workspace "Projects".
  2. Create an outline for the project ("Mobile App MVP").
  3. Use the position attribute to maintain WBS numbering order.
  4. Store acceptance criteria in node content.
  5. Mark completion status in the title (e.g. prefix [DONE]) until a status attribute is available.

5. Knowledge Base / FAQ Structure

Context: You maintain internal documentation or a FAQ and want a structured, navigable hierarchy.

Structure:

Engineering Handbook
├── Onboarding
│   ├── Development Environment Setup
│   ├── Code Review Process
│   └── Deployment Process
├── Architecture Decisions
│   ├── ADR-001: Graph-first data model
│   ├── ADR-002: PySide6 for GUI
│   └── ADR-003: SQLite for local persistence
├── Runbooks
│   ├── Deploying to Production
│   └── Rolling Back a Release
└── Glossary
    ├── GraphType
    ├── Module
    └── Workspace

Workflow:

  1. Create a workspace "Engineering".
  2. Create one outline per handbook ("Engineering Handbook").
  3. Top-level items are major sections; nested items are articles and sub-articles.
  4. Use content for the full article body.
  5. Use position to maintain the intended reading order.

Future Module Use Cases (Roadmap)

The following use cases are planned for future modules. The core graph engine already supports arbitrary typed graphs — a new module only needs to define a GraphType and a UI widget.

Kanban Board (Planned)

Nodes: Card (with title, description, priority) Edges: InColumn (Card → Column), Blocks (Card → Card) Use case: Sprint planning, task tracking, personal productivity

Entity-Relationship Diagram (Planned)

Nodes: Entity, Attribute Edges: HasAttribute, RelatesTo (with cardinality) Use case: Database schema design, domain modelling

Mind Map (Planned)

Nodes: Idea (with text, color) Edges: LinkedTo (bidirectional concept links) Use case: Brainstorming, concept exploration

Citation Network (Planned)

Nodes: Paper, Author, Venue Edges: Cites, AuthoredBy, PublishedIn Use case: Literature review management, citation analysis