Find your way around

In-Source Navigation

Follow the thread wherever it goes inside the source.

In-Source Navigation lets readers move through a single source — a document, knowledge graph, discussion thread, or codebase — by following its own internal references. Click a citation, jump to a related section, chase a call graph, trace a thread's replies. The user drives the traversal; the primitive reveals what's connected inside the source. Reach for it when depth-of-context inside a document matters as much as finding the document.

Shape

Operational dimensions

Human co-pilot

Person and system work side-by-side.

On demand

Fires when a user asks.

Medium data gravity

Holds working state that compounds over runs.

Read-only inbound

Consumes external data; does not write back.

Inputs

current position within a source (section ID, node ID, message ID)
source's internal reference graph (citations, backlinks, TOC, call graph, thread tree)
reader's traversal direction or link selection

Outputs

set of navigable references from current position (outbound and inbound)
next position after a jump
breadcrumb trail of traversal history within the source

Mechanism

Moves the reader through a single source (document, thread, knowledge graph, codebase) by following its internal references — citations, cross-links, table-of-contents, threaded replies, call graphs.

Why this is a primitive

Cannot be decomposed — the follow-reference-within-source operation is one indivisible act of intra-source traversal. It is not search (no query against a corpus), not faceted browse (no attribute constraints over a catalogue), and not surfacing (the user is driving the traversal, one link at a time). The reference-following engine over a single source IS the primitive.

Where it shows up

Researcher tracing citations inside a policy document — jumps from the summary to the supporting clause and from there to the annexe that defines a term

Developer navigating a codebase by call graph — follows a function to its callers and then to the interface it implements

Support analyst threading through a long conversation — jumps to the parent message and then to the branch that resolved the issue

Knowledge worker moving through a linked wiki — follows internal cross-references without leaving the source knowledge graph

Related primitives

Composes with

Corpus Retrieval →Cross-Source Synthesis →Faceted Filtering & Browse →Editorial Surfacing →

Alternative to

Corpus Retrieval →