Get set up

Mantis runs at mantis.csail.mit.edu. Getting in takes two steps: request access, then sign in with an existing Google or GitHub account. There is no email and password signup. This page covers both steps and the first things worth doing once you are in.

App

mantis.csail.mit.edu

Request access

home.withmantis.com/inquire

Sign in with

Google or GitHub

Help

Help menu, in-app

Request access

Fill in the form at home.withmantis.com/inquire. Access is granted per account, so use the account you intend to sign in with.

Sign in

1. Go to mantis.csail.mit.edu. If you are not signed in, you land on the sign-in page.
2. Choose Continue with Google or Continue with GitHub. Those are the only two providers. Nothing here asks for a password, and there is no account-creation form.
3. Land on the home dashboard. Sign-in returns you to /home, the list of every space you own or can see.

If sign-in fails or your account has not been granted access, the sign-in page links back to the same inquiry form under contact us. A Local dev login button appears only in development builds; you will not see it on the hosted app.

Find your way around home

The home dashboard is where you open an existing space or make a new one. The fastest path from nothing to a map is dropping a CSV on the New Space card, which analyzes the columns for you and opens the resulting space. The home dashboard covers the card, the search, the filters, and the space Health score.

Two shortcuts work anywhere on the page: Ctrl+N opens the create flow, Ctrl+F opens the search bar.

Explore your first space

Click any space to open it. You get the Default layout: Composer, Bags, Map, Tree, Inspector, and File Browser. Everything else lives in the View menu (Alt+V).

Start on the map with the tool island. The tools you will use first:

Tool	Shortcut	What it does
Select	I	Click individual points and clusters
Lasso	Q	Draw a freeform boundary and take everything inside it
Magic Lasso	M	Draw roughly, and snap the selection to the cluster underneath
Path	P	Select along a line
Landmark	N	Drop a note on a region of the map
Waypoint	W	Save the current view to return to
Journey	J	Select points and build an ordered walk through them
Clear all selections	Ctrl+⌫	Drop points, clusters, and bag highlights
Delete bags	Ctrl+⇧+⌫	Remove every bag in the map

Selection is the hinge of the whole app. Most panels render whatever is currently selected, so a panel that looks empty usually means nothing is selected rather than something is broken. Once you have a selection worth keeping, click New bag in the Bags panel.

The full list is in Help > Shortcut Table, and the tour walks through a session end to end.

Share a space

Sharing runs through two separate mechanisms.

Visibility controls who can reach the space at all. Open File > Visibility (owner only) and pick Public, which lets anyone with the link view it, or Private, which limits it to you and the people you have shared it with.

Collaboration rooms are for working at the same time. The Collaborate button sits at the right of the menubar and opens the rooms modal, where you create a room, invite people by email as Owner or Editor, and see who is currently connected. Invitees accept or decline the invitation from their own copy of the modal. Room state auto-saves while a room is live.

There is no single "Share" button. If you were looking for one, you want File > Visibility.

What is saved, and where

• Bags, selection, and plot settings sync to the server as part of the space state, so they come back when you reopen the space. The Threads control in the menubar switches between saved states.
• Panel layout is stored in your browser's local storage. It does not follow you to another browser or machine.
• Versions are explicit: File > Set New Version snapshots the space.

Get help

The Help menu (Alt+H) has exactly four items:

• Documentation opens the Mantis documentation site in a new tab.
• Shortcut Table lists every keyboard shortcut, grouped by menu, toolbar, and in-space options.
• Bug Report opens a form that attaches a screenshot of the current window plus recent console and network activity, and sends it to the team.
• Overview opens the built-in Overview Tutorial for the map controls.

For access problems rather than bugs, use home.withmantis.com/inquire.

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