# Idea Radar

> An idea board next to the backlog for everything you have heard but not decided on yet.

- Area: Desktop, mobile and web
- Plans: All plans
- Last checked against the product: 2026-09-30
- Web page: https://agentsroom.dev/docs/idea-radar

## What it does

An idea board next to the backlog for everything you have heard but not decided on yet. Feedback lands raw as a signal (the exact words, who said it, where, when; the wording is never rewritten), signals cluster into ideas and ideas into themes, duplicates are surfaced, and every idea shows how many people asked for it. When an idea is ripe you turn it into a backlog ticket and every person behind it becomes a follower of the ticket; a ticket you will not build for now goes back to the Radar and stays visible and votable. The backlog holds what you decided to do, the Radar holds what people asked for.

## Where to find it

- Inside a project: the **Radar** item of the dock ("What users asked for, not decided yet").
- From the support chat: select a text fragment or pick messages, then **Send to the Radar**.
- From the Backlog: select cards and **Send to the Idea Radar** in the selection bar, or on a ticket.
- For your users: the **Ideas** tab of your public board, once at least one idea is public.

## How to use it

1. Open **Radar**. New arrivals wait in **Incoming** on the left; **Sort all** files them into existing themes (an arrival the AI recognises as the same idea as an existing one takes that idea's theme), or drag a card onto a theme. Filing an arrival, by hand, by an agent or from the phone, takes it out of Incoming: it is now a qualified idea and sits in its theme column. Sort all and the **Sort with AI** button of a selection always say what they did in a toast: "{{n}} arrivals filed into themes.", "{{sorted}} filed, {{skipped}} left in the inbox: the AI found no theme for them.", "Nothing was filed: the AI found no theme for these arrivals. Drag them into a theme by hand." or "Sorting failed: {{reason}}".
2. Read the corpus through a lens: **List** (default: every idea on one column, arrivals included, filtered by **Status** and **Theme**, sorted by latest request, oldest request, latest activity, most requested or most voted; the arrivals rail is hidden there since the list already shows them), **Themes**, **Impact / effort** (drag a card to score it; the position is saved on the idea), **Opportunity tree** (themes hang off an **Objective**; an "Attached to no objective" column keeps orphans visible), **Constellation** (semantic map; dot size is the number of signals, likely duplicates are flagged with **Merge**).
3. Each card and each signal names its reporter, with a small count of how many reports that person has sent to this board (outlined from 5 on); hover it for the name, email and count. Open an idea: the demand summary, its timeline (first asked, last asked, last activity), every signal with its original wording, votes, the **Conversation** with the people who asked (replies are emailed to them and shown in their app; a private idea must be published first with **Publish the idea**).
4. Decide: **Turn into a ticket** (the idea stays, marked **Ticket open**, and all reporters are notified), **Park** / **Resume**, **Won't do** / **Reopen** ("Not planned" on the public side). **Delete** is only for spam or test entries and is refused on an idea that produced a ticket. The idea then follows its ticket: once the ticket is done, the idea leaves the Radar (every view and every counter, desktop and phone) and stays on the public board as **Shipped**; a ticket closed as won't fix keeps the idea in the Radar as "Not planned". If the ticket is merged into another one, the idea follows the ticket that was kept.

**Period** (calendar button of the toolbar) narrows the whole pane at once, the current view and Incoming alike: **Any time**, **Last 24 hours**, **Last 3 days**, **Last 7 days**, **Last 30 days**, or **Since a date**. An idea counts as recent from its last request, not from its creation, so an old idea asked for again yesterday stays in "Last 7 days". An empty result says "Nothing in this period", with **Clear the filters**. Since 2026-09-30.

**New idea** writes one by hand: the text you type becomes its first signal, kept word for word. **New theme** creates a pinned theme the AI re-sort can fill but never renames or dissolves. **Re-sort** re-reads the whole corpus and redraws the themes (counts against a monthly allowance).

The signal and idea counts shown on a theme are computed from the ideas themselves every time the board loads, so a theme an agent just filled shows its real numbers. While the Radar is open and the window visible, the board refreshes on its own every 30 seconds, so ideas filed by an agent working in another tab appear without a click.

**Start the agent** in the Radar panel runs a Product Manager (or Brainstormer, UX Researcher, Business analyst) with read access to every signal; it proposes reclustering, merges, scores and the next ticket, and asks before anything that reaches a person.

## Settings

No global key. Per public board, in **Share Backlog**: **Idea Radar tab** (show an Ideas tab on the public board) and **Where submissions land** (route bug reports, questions and feature requests to the Backlog or to the Idea Radar; feature requests go to the Radar by default).

## Agent tools (MCP)

- Read: `ideas_list`, `ideas_get`, `ideas_search`, `ideas_signals_list`, `ideas_clusters_list`, `ideas_cluster_get`, `ideas_outcomes_list`, `ideas_stats`, `ideas_duplicates`.
- Write: `ideas_create`, `ideas_update`, `ideas_append_signal`, `ideas_merge`, `ideas_split`, `ideas_cluster_create`, `ideas_cluster_rename`, `ideas_cluster_assign`, `ideas_cluster_pin`, `ideas_outcome_create`, `ideas_link_opportunity`, `ideas_park`, `ideas_reject`.
- Filing counts as qualifying: `ideas_cluster_assign`, or `ideas_update` / `ideas_create` with a theme, turns a raw arrival into a qualified idea that appears on the board. An explicit status wins, and a parked, rejected or promoted idea keeps its status.
- Bridges: `ideas_promote` (idea to ticket, preview first, asks the user), `ideas_demote` (ticket back to the Radar), `ideas_comment` (reply to the people behind an idea).

## Providers

All providers for the Radar agent. The automatic sorting and duplicate detection use AgentsRoom's AI helpers, or your own OpenAI key when you attached one.

## Mobile

Present: a **Radar** segment next to Agents and Backlog in the project screen, with the inbox, themes sorted by heat, idea details with the reporters' words and screenshots, merge, promote, vote and comment. The matrix and the tree become a sorted list. The period filter is a row of chips (Any time, 24 hours, 3, 7 and 30 days) above the sections; **Since a date** is desktop only. Not on the phone yet: Won't do, Delete, and the conversation thread of an idea.

## Limits

- Re-sort allowance per month: 5 on Free, 100 on Plus, unlimited on Pro; sorting new arrivals into existing themes does not count.
- An idea posted by a visitor stays private to its author and to you until you qualify it; its public page needs a title that is not the raw sentence.
- Duplicates are never merged automatically.
- Two themes are the same theme when their names match once punctuation and case are ignored, in any script (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Cyrillic included); the AI re-sort reuses the existing one instead of creating a twin.
- The original wording of a signal cannot be edited by anyone, agent included.
- A manually written idea carries your name but never your email, so it does not inflate the "people asked" count.
- Sending tickets to the Radar in bulk notifies each person once and stays cancellable for ten minutes.

## Common questions

- **How is this different from the backlog?** The backlog is the plan; the Radar is what you heard. One action moves an item either way.
- **Why is my idea not on the public page?** It is still raw or private. Sort it and click Publish the idea; the public tab appears once one idea is public.
- **Does the AI decide for me?** No. It proposes; promoting an idea and replying to reporters stay yours.
- **How do I close an idea?** Won't do keeps the record and tells reporters "Not planned"; Delete erases it and is meant for spam only.
- **Sort all did nothing, or said nothing?** Since 2026-09-17 the button always answers with a toast. "Nothing was filed" means the AI found no theme for these arrivals: create a theme with **New theme** or drag the cards by hand. "Sorting failed" gives the reason, most often no AI key or the AI helpers being unavailable; check [Bring Your Own OpenAI Key](https://agentsroom.dev/docs/bring-your-own-openai-key.md) or [AI Helpers Allowance](https://agentsroom.dev/docs/ai-helpers-allowance.md). A partial result names how many stayed in the inbox.
- **An agent said it classified everything, but Incoming is still full and the themes show 0 signals.** Fixed on 2026-09-17: filing an arrival now qualifies it whichever tool did it, theme counts are computed from the ideas on every load, and the open Radar refreshes by itself every 30 seconds.
- **A shipped idea vanished from my Radar.** Expected since 2026-09-29: once its ticket is done the idea leaves the Radar and remains on the public board as **Shipped**.
- **My idea says "Ticket open" although the work shipped.** Check that the ticket is really in Done and not closed as won't fix. If the ticket had been merged with another one, the idea used to stay on "Ticket open" for good: fixed on 2026-09-19, the idea now follows the kept ticket and ships with it. Ideas whose ticket was merged before that date were repaired at the same time.
- **All my Chinese (or other non-Latin) themes ended up in one theme.** Fixed on 2026-09-17: theme names in any script are compared correctly, so the AI no longer sees every new theme as a duplicate of the first.

## Related

- [Public Remote Backlog](https://agentsroom.dev/docs/public-backlog.md): the board whose Ideas tab shows public ideas.
- [Backlog Task Board](https://agentsroom.dev/docs/backlog-task-board.md): where promoted ideas become tickets.
- [Idea Box](https://agentsroom.dev/docs/idea-box.md): not the same thing: the Radar holds signals from users to sort and score, the idea box holds tickets you wrote yourself that have no project yet.
- [Feedback & Support Chat](https://agentsroom.dev/docs/feedback-and-support-chat.md): how reporters follow their idea.
- [Bring Your Own OpenAI Key](https://agentsroom.dev/docs/bring-your-own-openai-key.md): run the clustering on your own key.