Themes & Organization
Themes let you organize decision nodes into cross-cutting categories. A node about “JWT middleware” might belong to both an “auth” theme and a “security” theme. Themes work independently of the graph structure — they are tags, not edges.
Creating Themes
Define a theme with deciduous themes create. Each theme has a name, a color, and an optional description.
Created theme 'auth' (color: blue)
$ deciduous themes create performance green -d "Performance optimization work"
Created theme 'performance' (color: green)
$ deciduous themes create security red
Created theme 'security' (color: red)
Theme names are lowercase and dash-separated. Colors help distinguish themes visually in the web viewer.
Listing Themes
View all defined themes with deciduous themes list.
Name Color Description
auth blue Authentication and authorization decisions
performance green Performance optimization work
security red
Deleting Themes
Remove a theme and all its node associations with deciduous themes delete.
Deleted theme 'security'
Tagging Nodes
Apply themes to nodes with deciduous tag add. A node can have multiple themes.
Tagged theme 'auth' to node 1
$ deciduous tag add 5 auth
Tagged theme 'auth' to node 5
$ deciduous tag add 5 security
Tagged theme 'security' to node 5
Removing Tags
Removed theme 'security' from node 5
Listing Tags on a Node
Themes for node 5:
auth (blue)
security (red)
Auto-Suggestions
Deciduous can analyze node titles and suggest theme assignments with deciduous tag suggest. This scans nodes for keyword matches against existing theme names and descriptions.
Suggested tags:
Node 1 "Add user authentication" → auth
Node 5 "Implementing JWT middleware" → auth
Node 8 "Optimize query performance" → performance
Node 12 "Add rate limiting" → security
$ deciduous tag suggest 5
Suggested tags for node 5:
auth
Apply all suggestions at once with --apply:
Suggested tags:
Node 1 "Add user authentication" → auth (applied)
Node 5 "Implementing JWT middleware" → auth (applied)
Node 8 "Optimize query performance" → performance (applied)
Applied 3 suggested tags
Suggestions are tagged with source "suggested" rather than "manual", so you can distinguish them later.
Confirming Suggestions
Review and confirm auto-suggested tags with deciduous tag confirm. This upgrades a suggestion from "suggested" to "manual" status.
Confirmed theme 'auth' on node 1 (suggested → manual)
Filtering by Theme
Use the --theme flag on deciduous nodes to filter nodes by theme.
ID Type Title Status Confidence
1 goal Add user authentication active 90%
2 option Use JWT tokens active 80%
5 action Implementing JWT middleware completed 85%
6 outcome JWT auth working — 14 tests completed 95%
$ deciduous nodes --theme performance --status active
ID Type Title Status Confidence
8 goal Optimize query performance active 85%
Themes combine with other filters like --status, --type, and --branch for precise queries across the graph.