Pull a Thread

Your whole case, on one wall.

A detective's wall for investigators, journalists and anyone who has to get to the bottom of something. Pin what you find and tie it together with string. See it on a board, a timeline or a map, and hand over a report with every source and the day you found it.

See an Example ThreadThe Mary Celeste, found empty at sea in 1872. It opens without signing up.

Already signed up? Sign in:

Example thread: The Mary Celeste, 1872
The lifeboat is gone The last word Leaves New York for GenoaNovember 7, 1872 The Mary CelesteFound adrift, December 4, 1872 Captain Benjamin BriggsWith his wife, daughter and crew The last entry in the logNovember 25, near the Azores Fear of the cargoA theory: they took to the boat
The assistant

It reads the whole thread, not just one note

Ask what you are missing, and it reads every pin, every string and every note on the thread. Then it tells you which ties are weak, what might be missing and where to look next.

Anything it adds to your wall comes in marked as a hunch until you check it.

It takes a name that fits the work: the Sleuth for mysteries, the Analyst for investigations at work, the Archivist for family history, the Tutor for study.

An example, on the thread above
What am I missing?
The Sleuth

Fear of the cargo rests on fumes nobody measured. If the salvage hearing at Gibraltar recorded the state of the barrels, pin it and tie it to that theory.

The last word puts her near the Azores on November 25, and she was found on December 4. Nothing on the thread covers those nine days. Pin where the Dei Gratia found her and compare the two places.

Nothing yet says who last saw the lifeboat, or how it was launched. Look in the hearing record for what Oliver Deveau said about going aboard.

Phone records and payments, straight in

A spreadsheet of calls, texts or transfers becomes a chart of who dealt with whom. Each string says what passed between two people, how often and for how much.

A record you can hand over

Every pin keeps where it came from and when you found it, with a fingerprint of what was saved. Turn a thread into a report with its sources and dates, and black out what the client should not see.

Photos that date themselves

A photo from a phone or a camera brings the day and the place it was taken. It lands on the timeline and the map without typing.

One case, many views

The same pins on a board, a timeline, a map or a list, so you can see what happened, when and where.

Bring in what you have

Photograph pages, open a PDF, drop in a spreadsheet, or save a web page with the browser extension. Every word becomes something you can search and pin.

Threads that find each other

When two of your threads share a person or a document, the other one shows faintly off to the side. Move toward it and you are in it.

Walk someone through it

Present a thread one pin at a time to a client, an editor or a room, and keep notes only you can see.

Yours, and private

Your walls are yours alone unless you share a link. Back up everything to your own computer whenever you like.