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Plan · Before production

# Strategy, ideas, and the quarterly roadmap

Capture editorial intent before an episode number and folder exist. The strategy workspace helps you choose what deserves production—not merely store a longer wish list.

## Strategy decides; Planning schedules

Use Strategy for audience, purpose, mix, capacity, and idea selection. Use Planning for the dates and tasks that make chosen work happen. An idea can remain in Strategy without creating an empty episode workspace.

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### Strategy question

Should this exist, for whom, and why now?

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### Planning question

What must happen, on which day, and by what deadline?

## Keep channel-wide decisions in Notes

Open Notes in the main sidebar for decisions, strategy, and reminders that apply to the currently selected channel rather than to one idea or episode. Create a note, give it a clear title, and optionally add a topic such as Positioning, Brand, or Publishing.

The list shows each note’s topic and last committed update. The editor is the same movable block editor used in production Notes. Choose Save or press Command-S to commit a coherent revision, or Discard to return to it. Switching channels shows that channel’s own collection without silently committing a draft.

## Develop an idea visually or in writing

Open Ideas in the sidebar when a premise needs room to develop before it becomes an episode. Ideas and Planning → Strategy work with the same underlying idea record. The Ideas library keeps mind maps and notes together, while Strategy supplies prioritisation, relationships, and roadmap context.

1. Choose the thinking surface. Use the plus menu in the Ideas library to create a Mind Map or Note. Selecting an item always opens the matching editor in the main area.
2. Write freely in a note. Notes use movable text, title, heading, list, to-do, quote, divider, and code blocks, with inline formatting. Save commits the revision; low-frequency recovery snapshots protect an unfinished draft without making it authoritative.
3. Build a mind map from semantic shapes. Drag Hook, Question, Point, Supporting point, Demo, B-roll, Personal/story, Conclusion, or Next thread from the palette. Shapes snap to the grid, fit their text by growing vertically before widening, and can be moved or resized with the pointer.
4. Connect the thought. Drag between a shape's connection dots. A connector can be straight or curved and can show no arrow, one arrow, or arrows at both ends. Moving a shape reroutes its attached lines.
5. Use contextual controls. Select a shape or line to reveal its nearby toolbar. Shape actions include edit, focus, fit, and delete. Connector actions include path style, arrow treatment, arrow swap, and delete.
6. Change the view, not the idea. Zoom and pan freely, use Fit to Content to recover the whole board, or choose Arrange to turn a rough layout into grid-aligned rows. Focus Mode frames the selected shape and a Point's directly attached Supporting point, Personal/story, Demo, and B-roll shapes while fading unrelated branches.
7. Convert only when ready. Convert to Episode carries the idea's title and mind-map outline into the episode brief, or carries a note document into Episode notes, without requiring an empty production workspace during exploration.

## Start with the plain-English guide

Open Planning, switch to Strategy, and choose the quarter you want to shape. The built-in guide explains each concept and can add a clearly labelled worked example made from normal editable records.

1. State why the quarter exists. Add goals with an objective, an observable measure of success, a target date, and an honest status.
2. Define the editorial point of view. Content pillars describe recurring themes, the audience each serves, and a target share of the slate.
3. Add campaigns only when useful. A campaign is a time-bounded initiative with an objective. Evergreen work does not need to belong to one.
4. Set realistic capacity and cadence. Monthly capacity is measured in effort points. Per-series cadence expresses intended releases per quarter.

The worked example is removable

Edit or promote its items like real records, delete them one by one, or remove the labelled example as a group. Removing it does not delete episodes or planning tasks.

## Capture and evaluate an idea

A useful idea record contains more than a title. Add a short premise, the intended audience, the outcome it should create, and any research risks. Optionally connect a series, a primary pillar, one or more supporting pillars, a campaign, a goal, and a target release date. The primary pillar drives content-mix reporting; the other pillars make cross-theme work easier to find and filter.

Field | Use it to answer
--- | ---
Priority | Is this Parked, Later, Next, or Now?
Value | How useful or strategically important could it be?
Confidence | How strong is the evidence behind that value?
Effort | How much of the channel’s real capacity will it consume?
Target release | Does the idea belong to a particular date or window?

The comparison score is value × confidence ÷ effort. It is a conversation aid, not an automatic decision. A difficult episode can still be the right choice.

## Read the roadmap health signals

Capacity Committed effort compared with monthly production capacity.
Content mix Actual primary-pillar share compared with each active pillar’s target.
Cadence Planned releases compared with each series target.
Roadmap state Backlog, Planned, In progress, Delayed, Ready, or Completed.

“Open capacity” is not a command to fill every point. It is room for iteration, support work, and the unexpected. Missing effort estimates make the capacity signal less reliable, so estimate before treating it as a constraint.

## Greenlight the idea into production

1. Mark the idea Greenlit. Confirm its title, summary, series, and intended release.
2. Choose Create Episode. The new-episode sheet is prefilled from the strategy brief.
3. Review the real workspace details. Confirm series or Single, episode number, recording date, description, folder creation, and the workspace preview.
4. Create the episode. The idea becomes “Episode created,” retains its strategic context, and links to the durable production record.

A dated idea appears as an idea target in the calendar. When it becomes an episode, the episode-owned planned release replaces that target rather than creating a duplicate.