The Field Guide

How WorldbyFlow works.

The front page tells you what this is. This page shows you how it thinks — the method, the framework, the catalog, and what an analysis becomes once you have it.

The MethodThe FLOW FrameworkThe CatalogFormatsQuestions
Chapter I · The Method

Ask. Ground. Structure.

Every scan — all sixty-plus of them, across twelve domains — runs the same three-step discipline. The steps are why the output is trustworthy.

01

Ask

Bring whatever you have — a headline, an entity, a scenario, a pasted URL, or a plain question. Each scan applies a specific analytical method to it, rather than whatever a chat model felt like producing that day. Not sure which scan? The Router reads your question and picks one; the Planner designs a linked sequence toward a goal.

02

Ground

The scan runs against live search and domain-specific data — SEC EDGAR for finance, FRED for economics, GDELT for defense, NOAA for climate, OFAC for sanctions screening, and more. The grounding constrains what the analysis can claim: quantitative statements are anchored in time, names and titles are checked, and what can’t be verified is flagged rather than smoothed over.

03

Structure

What comes back is not a wall of text. It’s a brief with named fields — what happened, what it means, who’s exposed, what to watch — sized by the FLOW framework and ending in the sources it consulted, each one a click from the claim it supports. Structured output can be handed to a board, a class, or a teammate without translation.

Chapter II · The FLOW Framework

Every situation gets sized.

Two axes decide everything: SCALE — the organizational weight of a situation (dollars, authority, stakeholders) — and COMPLEXITY — how hard the right call is to see and to execute. Where a situation lands tells you what to do with it: delegate, resource, analyze, or mobilize.

One scale, three voices. The same letter answers a different question depending on the scan. On an Event or Entity scan it sizes a connection you’re interpreting; on a Risk Scan, Action Plan, or Options it sizes an action you’d be executing; everywhere, it sizes how much of your attention the thing deserves.

Routine & ContainedLow scale · low complexity
Delegate it.
Sizing itSmall stakes, easy to understand. Straightforward, with limited wider impact.
Reading a connectionA limited, straightforward connection — no hidden layers or surprising implications.
Executing an actionSimple to execute. Hand it to a line owner and move on — no executive attention required.
Significant but ClearModerate scale · low complexity
Escalate and resource it.
Sizing itMeaningful stakes, but the situation is well understood. The implications are evident.
Reading a connectionReal weight — resources, decisions, stakeholders — but what it means and where it leads is clear.
Executing an actionNeeds real resourcing and a clear owner, but the organization knows how to do this kind of thing.
Strategically ComplexSmaller scale · high complexity
Understand before acting.
Sizing itMeaningful stakes with real uncertainty — the situation could unfold in multiple directions.
Reading a connectionAmbiguity, competing interpretations, interconnected consequences. The key question tells you where to start.
Executing an actionThe right approach isn’t obvious — get aligned on what success looks like before mobilizing.
Large Scale & SignificantLarge scale · any complexity
Senior attention, now.
Sizing itVery high stakes. The scale alone makes this one of the most important items in the analysis.
Reading a connectionWhatever the mechanics, the sheer magnitude at stake makes this one of the most consequential connections.
Executing an actionExecutive authority, cross-functional coordination, major resources — however simple it looks.
ExtraordinaryNo precedent · both axes
Rare by design.
Sizing itUnprecedented — this changes the rules, not just the situation. At most one or two per analysis.
Reading a connectionOutside familiar patterns. Historical comparisons are limited; standard frameworks may not fully apply.
Executing an actionNormal playbooks don’t apply — a purpose-built approach with direct principal ownership.
Sizing itevery scanReading a connectionEvent & Entity scansExecuting an actionRisk · Action Plan · Options
The Three Rules
1.

A FLOW C cannot exist at large scale. High complexity at large scale is a D — the scale decides.

2.

At large scale, scale alone drives the classification. You don’t debate the difficulty of a billion-dollar problem before escalating it.

3.

A and B differ only in scale. Both are low complexity — the question is just how much weight rides on the routine call.

One vocabulary across every domain — a FLOW D in finance reads the same as a FLOW D in policy. That’s the point: the classification travels, so your judgment does too.

Chapter III · The Catalog

Four moves. Pick what the situation needs.

The scans group by what you’re trying to do: see what’s happening, work the raw material, map who’s involved, decide what to do. A sampling below — the full picker lives in the app, tuned per domain.

Discover

What’s happening right now
Event Scanmaps who an event actually affects — not just who’s in the headline
News Searchpull any thread, any time
Water Coolerwhat practitioners and observers are actually saying
For Youa persona-driven brief across everything you track

Explore

The raw material, worked over
Scenariothe full space of what could unfold, with probabilities
Chain of Eventstraces the dominoes — what happens after what happens
Deep divesa person, a weapon system, a medicine, a destination — profiled to the bottom
Building blocksPositions · Chronology · Money Trail · Mechanism · Key Players · Data Brief · Debate · Case Study · Playbook · Myths · Scene · Voices

Analyze

Connections and competitive fields
Entity Scanevery intersection mapped — who they touch, how, and what to watch
Landscapethe whole competitive field, not just the headline player
Relationship & Relationswho’s connected to whom — the map no single source carries
Synthesisreasons across your prior scans and names the tensions between them

Act

What to do about it
Optionsyour actual choices, with tradeoffs, timelines, and risks
Risk Scanwhere things break — before they break
Action Planphased steps, owners, timing, decision gates
Sentinelthe specific early-warning signals worth watching

Plus 25 structured-thinking frameworks (SWOT, pre-mortem, scenario matrix, ACH, Wardley mapping…), a Router that picks the right scan from a plain question, and a Planner that designs a linked sequence of scans toward a goal.

Chapter IV · Formats

One analysis, many shapes.

A scan isn’t trapped on the screen you ran it on. Every completed analysis converts to the shape the moment needs.

Readevery scan unfolds into a long-form prose narrative when you’d rather read an essay than a brief
Listena spoken analyst walkthrough, delivered to a personal podcast feed
Visuala dashboard-style image built from the scan’s own structure, ready to share
PDF & Markdownprint-grade documents and portable Markdown for Slack, Notion, or email
Books & reportsBook Studio turns an objective into a planned, researched, written, and edited book — or a decision-grade report
Chapter V · Questions

The things people ask.

How is this different from a chat box?
A chat box gives you a paragraph you have to re-read to decode, and it forgets the conversation. WorldbyFlow gives you structured output — named fields, classified weight, listed options, specific watch signals — and it holds onto your work. Prior scans quietly inform new ones, so the second time you look at a topic the analysis is sharper than the first. And each scan applies a specific method (Event Scan, Scenario, Risk, Landscape) rather than whatever the model felt like producing that day.
Does this work if I’m not an analyst?
Yes — it’s built for anyone who has to make sense of a complex situation. Educators turn scans into lesson plans. Nonprofit leaders use them to brief boards. Public-sector workers frame policy memos. Founders read a market move. Students break down a topic for a paper. The tools produce structured output with plain-language labels you can hand to a board, a class, or a teammate without translation.
How is this different from a news aggregator or a research database?
Aggregators deliver content — articles, tickers, reports. WorldbyFlow delivers structure over content: events pre-classified by scale and complexity, broken into who’s affected and how, and connected to scenarios, risks, options, and decisions. An aggregator tells you what happened; a scan tells you who it affects, how much to weight it, what comes next, and what to do. And whatever you analyze stays on your workbench — you don’t lose the thread between sessions.
Where does the data come from?
Scans ground against live Brave Search (news + web + discussion threads) and domain-specific APIs — SEC EDGAR for finance, FRED for economics, GDELT for defense, NOAA for climate, FDA for health, OFAC for sanctions screening, and more. The grounding constrains what the model can claim, alongside prompt-level disciplines built into every analytical scan: temporal anchoring on quantitative claims, anti-hallucination rules on names and titles, and scholarly-source rules where applicable. Every analytical scan cites the web sources it consulted so you can verify the grounding yourself.
Can I export or share what I get?
Yes. Every scan exports as a print-grade PDF or portable Markdown, and can be shared via a public link or directly with another WorldbyFlow user. Paid tiers also get audio briefings with a personal podcast feed, prose narratives, and shareable visual summaries. Approved books export to EPUB and KDP-ready PDF.
What do credits cost in practice?
Standard is $10/month for 20 credits; Premium is $25/month for 60. A typical analysis costs 1–3 credits depending on depth — light scans are 1, core analyses 2, flagship reasoning (Scenario, Risk, Synthesis) 3–4, and multi-step entity work up to 5. Unused subscription credits bank while you stay subscribed, and credit packs are available if you run out mid-month.

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