Project Management#

• New project - Create with name and description
• Load project - Open selected project
• Edit project - Click row to modify name, description, tags, sharing (or use Edit project Modal)
• Archive/Unarchive - Hide/show projects (archived projects are read-only and hidden from public view)
• Read-only toggle - Restrict editing even for owners/editors (independent of archive status)
• Archive toggle - Show/hide archived projects in the table

Bulk Operations#

Select projects with checkboxes, then:

• Delete - Remove projects and all data
• Apply Tags - Add tags to selected projects
• Remove Tags - Remove tags
• Toggle Archive - Archive/unarchive
• Merge - Combine multiple projects into one

Sharing and Permissions#

• Email-based collaboration : add and remove colleagues' email addresses
• Locked / Read-only permissions for viewing without editing
• Global sharing for public read-only access (free to turn on; keeping a project private instead needs an active paid plan, see Private projects and subscription expiry)
• Permission badges next to project names
• Admin only: admin panel for user management

Note: In the Edit Project modal, the informational notice "Upgrade to a Private subscription to create or share private projects. New projects on the Free plan are public by default." is shown only to users who can edit the project (owner, editor, or admin). Viewers do not see this notice.

What a Viewer can and cannot do#

A Viewer is a collaborator added with the Viewer permission, or anyone opening a Public project that they neither own nor have been added to as an Editor. The owner and Editors have the same limits while a project is Locked. When a Viewer tries something that would be saved to the project, the app refuses with a message such as "You need edit access to modify bookmarks for this project" or "This file is read-only – editing is not permitted".

A Viewer can:

• Open the project and browse the map, the Links, Factors and Sources tables, and the source text.
• Change what they see without changing the project: select sources, filter, trace paths, sort, use the pivot tables and change how the map looks. These settings live in the page URL, not in the project.
• Open saved bookmarks and the report, play the slideshow, and copy a bookmark's link, image or HTML.
• Download the project's data and export tables, maps and the report.
• Ask MapCat questions about the project. MapCat cannot do for a Viewer what the app would refuse.

Anything saved to the project needs edit access (Owner or Editor, on a project that is not Locked):

• Bookmarks: saving a new bookmark, overwriting or editing one, changing its description, and deleting one.
• Report slides and decks: every report slide is a bookmark, so creating, renaming or deleting a deck, adding slides to or removing slides from a deck, editing a slide's description, and generating report slides all need edit access.
• Coding: highlighting text to create a link, editing or deleting a link, running AI coding, recoding, renaming or deleting factors, search and replace on labels, bulk changes to links, copying or deleting a factor label set, and managing custom link columns.
• Assessing links: saving an assessed link, including the AI assessment.
• Sources: adding or uploading sources, editing a source's text, title or metadata (including editing the cells of the Sources table), and deleting sources.
• Project settings: renaming the project and changing its description or settings.
• Prompts: a prompt that a Viewer types or runs is not added to the project's saved prompt history.

Versioning#

The app automatically backs up your project, so you can restore earlier snapshots if you want.

• An automatic backup is made every 10 minutes if you have made changes.
• You can make a manual backup from the Project Info screen.
• You can use the Version dropdown menu in the Project Info screen to see all available backups with details.
• From here you can restore a backup, with a confirmation step before applying changes.
• After restoring an earlier version, you can always go back to the latest version if you want, using the same dropdown menu.

This panel shows a dropdown list of times when you made changes to the mapfile in UTC/GMT. Along with the size of your file which can help you identify which timepoint you want to revert to. It can be easy to forget what time you made alterations to your file, so if you're likely to want to restore a previous map it is best to note the time so that you can easily return to it.

Named versions. When you make a manual backup you can give it a name, for example actor-focused or normal. This is useful when you keep more than one style of coding in the same project.

• Named versions are kept forever; unnamed backups are pruned over time (see below).
• Names can be reused: the version list shows each entry as date and time plus its name, so the timestamp tells versions in the same line apart.
• The name box is prefilled with the name of your newest named version, so saving again into the same line is one click. Clear the box to make an unnamed backup, or type a new name to start a new line.
• Once a project has at least one named version, a shortcut button appears in the Projects Bar, just left of the pencil, so you can open Versions with one click instead of going through the File menu.
• Restoring a named version puts a fresh copy of it at the top of the version list under the same name, so the newest named version always shows which coding line you are working in.
• Every bookmark records the exact backup that was current when you saved it (making a fresh backup first if needed). Slides in the Reports list and slideshow show the version name as a badge, so a deck can mix slides from different coding styles and you can see which is which. Backups referenced by a bookmark are never pruned while the bookmark exists.