Flowcharting?

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1

What do you need help with?

Brand-new Anytype user here, looking for tips. I’m charting task dependencies using linked objects. For example, “Bake a cake” would be at the top of a link-chain, “Find a cake recipe” would be at the bottom, and the steps in-between would be linked according to which tasks must be done first before others can be started. The simplest possible chain would be a single line, but branches and convergences would be expected.

I’m not sure if the linked-objects method is the only or best way to do this, but it’s what I’ve figured out so far. It’s working alright, but I’m wondering about visualization options. So far I’ve found three:

GRAPH

Pros:

  • Many filters available to weed out irrelevant objects/links, as well as the “Local view” to focus on the immediately relevant tasks.
  • Easy to go from looking at a task to seeing its place in the graph.

Cons:

  • Mind-map format can be confusing to orient within, with little or no sense of parallel hierarchies.
  • Complicated linking can create illegible graphical snarls.
  • When zooming out to see more tasks at once, labels disappear, making the diagram rather useless for my purposes.
  • Not yet available in the mobile app.

WIDGET OF THE ROOT OBJECT

Pros:

  • Nested list is comprehensible at a glance, with parallel hierarchies clear and easy to browse through.
  • Complicated linking is accounted for with redundancy (same object showing up more than once if necessary) rather than visual snarls.
  • Any chain or downstream section of a chain can be shown or hidden with a click, allowing for a more tailored focus than the Graph “Local view”.
  • Unlike in the Graph, there is no point at which objects become unidentifiable.
  • Implemented in mobile, but chains can only be expanded 3 links deep.

Cons:

  • Can’t automatically locate an object within its chain, unlike when you go to Graph view from an open object. Hunting manually is required.
  • No filters available, meaning that adding links to indicate anything other than dependencies will introduce noise.

FLOW

  • Could be useful for this if it showed more than one degree of linking in either direction, but too limited as-is.

What I would actually love is a traditional flowchart, which could have all the pros and none of the cons listed above. If that exists and I just haven’t learned how to access it, I’m all ears! Barring that, I’m curious if what I’ve described sounds like the best and/or only way to do what I want, and whether my assessment of the pros and cons is accurate. Thank you!

OS

Windows 10 & Android 12

Anytype Version

v0.49.2

Network Mode

Not sure, whatever the default is

Technical Information

OS version: win32 x64 10.0.19045
App version: 0.49.2
Build number: build on 2025-08-19 10:36:34 +0000 UTC at #f6a52252cfb9373a9191f92745bd70587934ea24
Library version: v0.43.0-rc02

2

hi @Astro-L! The flowchart you are imagining is not really ideal in Anytype at the moment. I tend to go for simple workflows, so I just use linked pages. For the visual nesting, you can make a widget of the top level page and there is a view for hierarchy that shows the different levels. It’s not ideal for tasks, but something you could try.

3

Thank you for the response, @Curie! I think you and I are doing the same thing, except your objects are Pages while mine are Tasks. Your “widget of the top level page” suggestion is what I called “WIDGET OF THE ROOT OBJECT” above.

The reason I’m going with Anytype for this is that I can make a widget that shows only objects that have no forward-links, which for my purposes means only tasks that aren’t dependent on anything else. Those are all the things I can do right now, and seeing them with no other clutter helps me feel less overwhelmed and more able to start on them. Hierarchical views are good for planning, and the only-actionable-tasks view is good for doing. AT is so close to being ideal for me! Certainly closer than anything else I’ve found.