A diagram works because it is short. But almost every box has more behind it than its label admits — the caveat, the decision you already argued out, the link to the source material. A note is where that goes: attached to the element, out of sight until someone asks for it.
Every boxed element can carry one: shapes, text, sticky notes, images, tables, link cards, and annotations. Arrows cannot.
Adding a note
Right-click the element to open its menu and go to Resources.
Choose Add Note (it reads Edit Note once there is one). The note popover opens beside the element.
Write, then press Cmd-Enter to save or Esc to cancel. An element with a note shows a small badge you can click to reopen it.
Formatting
The toolbar sits above the writing area and is always visible — a note is read at least as often as it is written, and a toolbar that appeared only on focus would make the popover jump the moment you clicked into it.
- Bold, Italic, Underline — also on
Cmd/Ctrl+B,I, andU. - Heading and Subheading, for a note long enough to want sections.
- Bullet list, Numbered list, and Remove list.
- Link, which opens a one-line address field under the toolbar.
The writing area starts at a comfortable few lines and can be dragged taller by its bottom edge if you are writing something substantial.
You don't have to select text first. With the cursor sitting in a word, Bold and its siblings apply to that whole word; Heading and the list buttons apply to the whole line. Select a range and it does what you'd expect instead.
Links inside a note
The Link button turns the selected text into a link, and pre-fills the address field if the cursor is already sitting on one, so editing an existing link is the same gesture as making one. Remove takes the link off and leaves the text.
Type a bare host like example.com and it becomes https://example.com. Only web and email addresses are accepted — http, https, and mailto — and links open in a new tab so a note never navigates you away from your diagram.
Reading a note
Anyone who can see the diagram can read a note, including view-only visitors. They get the formatted note and no toolbar at all, so nothing suggests an edit they cannot make.
On an annotation, simply hovering the marker floats the note above everything else on the canvas, which is what makes annotations the right choice for review comments you want available at a glance. On every other element, the note opens from the badge or the menu.
What a note is not
- Not a conversation. A note is one body of text on the element, edited in place. For a thread with replies and a resolved state, use comments; to put a task on someone's plate, use assigned actions.
- Not visible in image exports. Notes are left out of PNG and SVG exports on purpose — they are an on-demand affordance, not page content. They do travel in the JSON export, so a note survives a round trip.
- Not a separate undo stream. Saving a note goes through history like any other edit, so undo and the activity panel treat it the same as moving a box.
Deleting all the text and saving removes the note and its badge, which is the same thing the Delete note action does. There is no such thing as an empty note hanging off an element.
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