Idea Relations

Relations let you express how ideas connect to each other. Every relation has a source, a target, a type, and an optional note. Together, they form a directed graph that you can explore in the mind map or via the CLI.

Relation Types

NeuralRepo supports six relation types. Each serves a distinct purpose.

Type	Direction	Meaning
`related`	A → B	General connection. A and B are conceptually related.
`parent`	A → B	Hierarchical. A is the parent of B. Use this to break large ideas into sub-ideas.
`blocks`	A → B	A blocks progress on B. B cannot move forward until A is resolved.
`inspires`	A → B	A inspired the creation of B. A seed that grew into something new.
`duplicate`	A → B	A is a duplicate of B. Automatically created by the duplicate detection system.
`supersedes`	A → B	A replaces B. The newer idea makes the older one obsolete.

Creating Relations

Open an idea and click + Add Relation in the relations panel. Select the target idea, choose a relation type, and optionally add a note explaining the connection.

# Link two ideas with a relation
nrepo link <source> <target> --type <type> --note "optional explanation"

# Examples
nrepo link 10 42 --type blocks --note "Need auth system before dashboard"
nrepo link 5 18 --type parent
nrepo link 3 7 --type inspires --note "The API idea grew out of this"

curl -X POST https://neuralrepo.com/api/v1/map/relations \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NREPO_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "source_idea_id": 10,
    "target_idea_id": 42,
    "type": "blocks",
    "note": "Need auth system before dashboard"
  }'

Cycle Detection

Certain relation types enforce acyclicity to maintain a coherent graph.

Behavior	Relation Types	What happens
Hard-blocked	`blocks`, `supersedes`, `parent`	Cycles are rejected outright. You cannot create a relation that would form a loop.
Soft-blocked	`related`, `inspires`	Cycles trigger a warning but can be overridden.

To override a soft-blocked cycle in the CLI:

nrepo link 3 7 --type inspires --force

Viewing Relations

# List all relations for an idea
nrepo links <id>

# Explore the graph from a starting idea
nrepo graph <id>

# Limit depth and filter by type
nrepo graph <id> --depth 3 --type blocks,inspires

# Get the full graph
GET /api/v1/map

# Response includes nodes and edges
{
  "nodes": [...],
  "edges": [
    {
      "id": 1,
      "source": 10,
      "target": 42,
      "type": "blocks",
      "note": "Need auth system before dashboard",
      "score": null,
      "created_at": "2026-03-20T14:30:00Z"
    }
  ]
}

Auto-Created Relations

NeuralRepo creates some relations automatically:

Duplicate detection: When a new idea scores above the dedup threshold (default 0.75) against an existing idea, a duplicate relation is created along with a pending detection record.
Related suggestions: When a new idea scores above the related threshold (default 0.5) but below the dedup threshold, a related relation is created automatically.

These thresholds are configurable in your user settings. See Duplicate Detection for details.

Removing Relations

nrepo unlink <source> <target>

DELETE /api/v1/map/relations/:id