Changes, review & undo

Every change Lino AI makes to your work goes through one path: it makes a Proposal, the Proposal is applied, and the reply ends with a review card listing everything it changed. From that card you can apply what is waiting, undo what landed, or ask for a different version.

When a change takes effect

Lino AI sorts each change into one of two kinds.

Lands right away — in every mode, as soon as Lino AI makes it:

• New things: Cards, Tables, diagrams and Charts, Links and imported Images.
• Putting Artifacts you already have into the Inbox.
• New Connections, and changes to Connections Lino AI drew itself.
• Edits to things that are Lino AI's own (see below).
• Ticking or changing the status of a task assigned to Lino AI (for example a step on its Plan Card).

Waits for the end of the reply — everything that changes your work:

• Edits to Cards, Tables and other Artifacts you wrote.
• Changing or removing a Connection you drew.
• Anything that depends on another waiting change.

What happens to the waiting changes at the end depends on the mode:

Either way, everything can be undone from the review card. If you press Stop, waiting changes stay waiting in every mode.

What counts as "its own"

Set this in Settings → Permissions → General → Lino AI can change without asking:

• What it wrote (default) — Artifacts Lino AI wrote (almost entirely AI-generated).
• Anything it has worked on — any Artifact Lino AI has contributed to. Broader: a long Card of yours where it once fixed a typo would count.

Example

In Manual mode you ask: "Make a Card summarizing chapter 3, link it to my Chapter 3 notes, and fix the dates in my Timeline Card."

• The new summary Card is created right away and shows up in your Inbox.
• The Connection to Chapter 3 notes is drawn right away.
• The fix to your Timeline Card waits. The review card shows it under Waiting for apply, with a checkbox. Press Apply to make the fix, or untick it and leave the Card as it was.

While it works

You don't get a separate card for each change during a reply. The work log groups them in a step such as Updated 3 proposals, with lines like Created · 2 · Applied or Edited · 1 · Waiting. The review card comes once, at the end.

The review card

The card at the end of a reply has:

• A title — what this reply was doing. Click Expand all / Collapse all to open every row.
• Rows — one per kind of change, e.g. Create Card · 3, Edit Card, Update Connection · 2, Create Table, Edit Properties, Import Image. Click a row's chevron to see the details: the new Card, a red/green diff of an edit, the Table changes, or a small graph of the Artifacts being connected.
• Two sections, when some changes landed and some are waiting: Applied · N and Waiting for apply · N. When nothing is waiting there is just one list.
• A status line — e.g. 2 applied · 1 waiting, Applied, Undone, or 2/3 selected while you choose.
• Buttons — Apply, Undo, Redo and Revise, depending on the state.

Choose what to apply

Waiting rows have checkboxes. Untick a row to leave it out, then press Apply. Rows that depend on an unticked row are unticked with it and say so (Required step not selected). Rows that already landed have a fixed tick.

Some waiting rows carry a reason underneath:

If something changed since it was proposed (Changed since this was proposed. or Gone since this was proposed.), untick that row to apply the rest, or ask for it again.

Where new things land: the Inbox

New Artifacts never appear scattered on your Canvas. They go into the Inbox Stack at the bottom-left, one group per reply.

From the Inbox you can:

• Drag an item onto the Canvas where you want it.
• Place a whole group on the current Canvas at once.
• Clear a group (this only empties the Inbox; it does not delete the Artifacts).

See Inbox for everything the Inbox Stack does.

Edits to things already on a Canvas update them in place. If Lino AI made a new Canvas for you, it is empty — moving things onto it is still up to you.

Undo and redo

The undo for AI changes is on the review card, not ⌘Z:

• Undo (at the bottom) — takes back everything this reply changed, newest first. Things that were waiting and never applied are simply not applied.
• Undo on a row — when a reply landed changes in several steps, hover a landed row to undo just that one. If later changes build on it, the button says Undo this and N later.
• Redo — puts an undone reply's changes back, with the same Cards and ids, so references to them keep working.

⌘Z is for your own edits on the Canvas. What you did after an apply — dragging a Card out of the Inbox, editing it — is on ⌘Z as usual; the AI's changes themselves are not.

When undo stops

Undo never overwrites your own work. If you edited something after Lino AI changed it, undo stops there and the card says Changed since this was applied. Undo stopped rather than overwriting your work. Whatever was undone before that point stays undone. Put the object back the way Lino AI left it, or leave it as it is.

Undo covers changes to Lino's data. Files Lino AI edited on your computer and commands it ran are not undone from the card; open View diff on the reply to see what changed in files.

Revise

Revise sits beside Apply and Redo. Press it, then say in the composer what you want different ("make the summaries shorter", "skip the last two Cards"). Lino AI writes a new version of the Proposal. It is available while changes are waiting and after you undo them.

Related: Modes & permissions · Plans