Vignettes

A vignette is a name, a set of point ids, and a markdown write-up, stored with the map. You make one when you have understood something about a selection and want that understanding to survive the session. Vignettes are the only inspection artifact in Mantis that is saved on the server and can be shared with someone else.

Where to find it

Open View > Inspection > Vignettes. The panel needs point metadata to have finished loading.

What a vignette contains

Just three things that matter: the name, the points it covers, and the content, a markdown document rendered in the panel. Alongside those, Mantis stores who created it, who has been granted access, whether it is public, and which map and space it belongs to.

It does not store plots, drawings, camera positions or a map coordinate. It is a write-up attached to a set of points.

Creating one

The creation form sits under the list. It has two independent choices:

Creation Mode decides where the text comes from.

• AI Generate (the default) sends your prompt and the point ids to the vignette generator and fills the content with what comes back.
• Manual gives you a text area to write the content yourself.

Data Source decides which points the vignette covers.

• Selection uses the points selected on the map, or the points in the selected bags if no individual points are selected.
• Cluster uses a cluster you pick from a dropdown, which shows the cluster label and its point count.

Two more controls:

• Generate Name asks the model for a name based on the same points, so you do not have to invent one.
• High Quality splits the points into batches of 50, generates a write-up per batch in parallel, then asks for a final summary over all of them. It is slower and shows batch progress while it runs.

You can also create one without opening this form: the Summarizer’s Dashboard tab has a Save as Vignette button that stores the generated analysis as a vignette named after its first words and the timestamp.

1. Select the points you want the vignette to cover, or switch Data Source to Cluster.
2. Press Generate Name, or type your own.
3. Leave Creation Mode on AI Generate and write a prompt saying what you want explained, or switch to Manual and write the content yourself.
4. Press Generate & Create. The button is disabled until there is a name and a source.
5. Find it in the list above, and expand Vignette Content to read the write-up.

Sharing and access

Each vignette in the list has two share controls. The copy icon puts a link to the current space with ?vignette=<id> appended on your clipboard; opening that link loads the vignette for whoever follows it, if they are allowed to. Share Options opens the full dialog:

• General access is a dropdown with three settings. Anyone with the link lets any signed-in user who has the link open it. Unlisted keeps it link-only and restricted to the people you have granted access to. Private means only you.
• Only the owner can change general access. Anyone else sees the current setting and the message “Only the owner can change this setting.”
• With Unlisted, the owner gets an Add people field: type an email address, press Add, and that person is added to the access list. People With Access then lists the owner plus everyone granted, and the owner can revoke any of them with the trash icon beside their address.
• Opening a shared link you are not allowed to see produces an Access Denied card with the reason, rather than an empty panel.

Deleting a vignette is owner-only too: the trash button appears only on vignettes you created.

Finding vignettes

The search box at the top of the list is semantic, not literal. Type a phrase and press Enter, and Mantis embeds your query and every vignette’s name and content, ranks them by cosine similarity, and shows the matches with a percentage badge. Results below a small similarity floor are dropped. Clearing the box restores the full list.

Three filter buttons sit inside the search box: All, Public, and Private, the last of which shows only unpublished vignettes you created.

Limits

• Vignette content is generated or typed once. The panel has no editor for an existing vignette, and creating a second one with the same name gives you two vignettes, not a replacement.
• The search runs over vignette names and content only, not over the points a vignette covers.
• Opening a vignette’s Vignette Content section shows the write-up in place. It does not select its points or move the map camera.
• Journeys are a separate feature with their own per-step write-ups. Drawing a path and generating a journey from it creates journey pages, not entries in this panel.

Read nextJourneysGuided, multi-step walks through a space.