The Farkitect Workspace

Farkitect has two surfaces:

• The dashboard — on the website, in your browser. This is where you manage your projects, your reusable assets, and your account.
• The modeller — the app where you actually build models, with the Explorer, Canvas, and supporting panels. It runs as a desktop app and in the browser.

This page maps both. It describes what each area does and where to find it — not how to use it. For hands-on guidance, start with the tutorials.

The Website Dashboard

When you sign in at farkitect.com, you land in the dashboard — the home base for everything you own.

• Overview — a “continue where you left off” card that re-opens your last project, plus at-a-glance counts of your projects, assets, and members.
• Projects — the list of projects you can access, with search, filters, and card or table views. Open a project’s model with the Farkitect it! button, which launches it in the modeller.
• Assets — your reusable .farki files (whole projects or individual packages). Upload new ones, and publish them to the Farketplace for others to use.

The left sidebar holds the Dashboard, Projects, and Assets links. The top bar has your organisation switcher (if you belong to more than one), a Support button, a link to these docs, the light/dark toggle, and your account menu. Links to your User Settings and Organisation Settings sit at the bottom of the sidebar — see Configure personal settings and Configure organisation settings.

The Modeller

Opening a project (Farkitect it!, or File > Open Project…) launches the modeller. It uses a dockable panel layout: you can drag panels to rearrange them, tab them together, pop them out, or resize them. Your layout is saved per project and restored when you return. View > Reset Layout restores the default arrangement.

The browser tab (and the desktop window title) shows the name of the open project.

Menus

The modeller is driven by an application menu bar — File, Edit, View, Diagram, and Help — at the top of the window (the native menu bar on desktop, an in-window menu bar in the browser). It covers project management, import/export, panel toggles, theming, and zoom. For the full list of commands and their shortcuts, see the Menu Reference.

Panels

Explorer

Default position: Left side

The Explorer shows your project’s contents as a hierarchical tree: packages, elements, diagrams, and catalogs. Everything in your model lives here.

• M3 packages appear with red text — these are system-level and read-only
• M2 packages appear with yellow text — these are metamodel definitions
• M1 packages appear with white text — this is where your modeling work lives
• Diagrams and Catalogs appear as children of the package they belong to

You can right-click items for context menus, drag items to reorder or move them between packages, and use F2 to rename. View > Metamodels (Ctrl+Shift+M) shows or hides the M2/M3 packages.

Canvas

Default position: Centre

The editing surface. It hosts three kinds of view as tabs — diagrams, catalogs (tables), and boards (Kanban) — each a different projection of the same model. When you open a diagram (by double-clicking it in the Explorer), it appears here as a tab. You can:

• Drag elements from the Palette or Explorer onto the Canvas to add them
• Click and drag between elements to create relationships
• Select, move, resize, and arrange elements
• Route edges and add waypoints (see Route edges)
• Nest elements inside other elements by dragging them together
• Zoom with the scroll wheel and pan by dragging the background

Each open diagram has its own diagram toolbar along the top of the canvas, with diagram-specific controls:

• Save and Save All
• Undo / Redo
• Share — export the diagram as PNG, SVG, or PDF, or copy it to the clipboard
• Theme override — render this diagram in light or dark independently of the app theme (useful for exports)
• Toggles for property compartments, stereotypes, and relationship labels
• The routing style for edges, and a snap all right angles action
• The related elements filter

Diagrams require an explicit Save (Ctrl+S / Cmd+S). Unsaved changes are indicated in the tab title.

Palette

Default position: Right side

The Palette shows the element types and relationship types available for the current diagram, grouped by their M2 metamodel layer. It combines types from all metamodels imported into the current package.

• Drag an element type from the Palette onto the Canvas to create a new instance
• Drag an element type from the Palette onto a package in the Explorer to create an element without placing it on a diagram
• Use the search box at the top to filter types by name

Properties

Default position: Right side (tabbed with Notes)

When you select an element (in the Explorer, on the Canvas, or in a Catalog), the Properties panel shows its editable fields:

• Name — the element’s display name
• Classifier — which M2 type this element is an instance of (read-only for M1 elements)
• Property values — typed fields defined by the M2 metamodel (strings, numbers, booleans, dates, enumerations)
• Appearance — per-diagram fill colour, border colour, and border width overrides for the selected node or edge (see Format nodes and edges)
• Relationships — incoming and outgoing relationships connected to this element

Required properties are marked and validated. Enumeration properties show a dropdown of allowed values.

Notes

Default position: Right side (tabbed with Properties)

A text editor for the selected element’s notes field. Supports Markdown formatting. Use this for longer descriptions, design decisions, or any narrative content associated with an element.

Context

Default position: Right side (tabbed)

Shows the elements related to the current selection — its connected elements across the model, with navigable links so you can jump from one element to another.

Guidance

Default position: Right side (tabbed)

Shows context-sensitive guidance for whatever you’re doing — hints relevant to the current selection or task. Toggle it from View > Guidance (Ctrl+Shift+G).

Log

Default position: Bottom

A dockable log panel that records mutations (create, update, delete operations) as they happen. Useful for understanding what changed and when.

• Filter by severity (info, warning, error)
• Filter by source (which part of the application triggered the change)

Toggle via View > Log or Ctrl+Shift+J / Cmd+Shift+J.

FarkiBot

Default position: Right side (tabbed with Properties)

Farkitect’s AI assistant. Ask questions about your model, write documents from it, generate metamodels and models from a brief or an attached document, or modify a model you already have.

FarkiBot uses your own AI provider key — nothing is bundled and nothing is billed by us. A toolbar across the top of the panel controls the task, the LLM, what gets sent as context, and whether the run may use web research.

Toggle via View > FarkiBot or Ctrl+Shift+K / Cmd+Shift+K. See Working with FarkiBot.

Welcome

A first-run panel with orientation links for new projects. Toggle it from View > Welcome.

Status Bar

Position: Bottom of the workspace

The status bar shows contextual information:

• Selection info — what’s currently selected and how many items
• Element counts — total elements, relationships, and diagrams in the project
• Operation feedback — progress indicators for async operations (import, export, seed)
• Integrity — a status indicator showing whether the model has referential integrity issues. Click it to run an on-demand check (see Integrity checker)
• Metamodel staleness — a prompt to refresh metamodels when they’ve changed
• Role — your role on the current project

Hide or show it with View > Status Bar.

Settings

There’s no separate settings panel in the modeller. Quick display options live in the View menu — Dark Mode (Ctrl+Shift+D), Status Bar, and Auto-refresh Metamodels. Everything to do with your account — name, avatar, email, locale, and preferences — lives on the website, on the User Settings page.

Keyboard Navigation

• Tab / Shift+Tab — cycle through nodes on the current diagram
• F2 — rename the selected item (Explorer or Canvas)
• Delete — remove the selected item from the diagram (Canvas) or delete it (Explorer)
• Escape — cancel the current operation or deselect
• Ctrl+S / Cmd+S — save diagram changes

For the complete list, see Keyboard Shortcuts.

Themes

Farkitect supports light and dark themes. Toggle via View > Dark Mode or Ctrl+Shift+D / Cmd+Shift+D. Your preference is saved and persisted across sessions. Individual diagrams can override the theme for export using the diagram toolbar’s theme control.