Working with Comments

Select a subject from the sidebar to open it. The content panel shows your subject tree where all your work happens — the outliner displays your subject hierarchy: references, entries, and comments organized as a collapsible outline.

Adding comments in the outliner

There are three ways to add comments from within a subject:

• + Add button — tap Add on any node to create a child. An inline input appears with tabs for Write, Paste, URL, Upload, and Capture.
• Enter key — press Enter on a focused node to add a sibling; Shift+Enter to add a child.
• Compose overlay — tap the expand icon on the inline input to open a full split-screen editor with your source material on one side and your comment on the other.

Generating AI comment ideas

On any reference or entry node that has body text, tap the Generate button (Hoot icon). The AI reads your source material and creates comment ideas as child nodes, each approaching the topic from a different coaching angle.

Generated comments appear in the tree with their bodies expanded so you can read them immediately. Use them as inspiration — then write your own, or edit one to make it yours.

Coaching a comment

Tap the ⋮ button on any comment node and choose Coach from the quick actions bar. Hoot reads your comment and provides feedback with scores:

• Clarity — can someone follow your point after hearing it once?
• Conciseness — does every word earn its place?
• Depth — does it add something beyond the obvious?
• Relevance — does it connect to what's being discussed?

Along with scores, you'll see specific suggestions. Some include an Apply button to accept the suggested revision directly.

Understanding Scores →

Editing and refining

Tap the ⋮ button on a comment node — or press . — to open the action modal with all available tools:

• Edit / Zoom — opens the compose overlay with source context visible alongside your comment. From there you can navigate between sibling comments, toggle between EN / ES / side-by-side (if a translation exists), switch to a clean read mode for practice, and view live metrics like word count, speaking time, and vocabulary diversity. Learn more →
• Refine — give the AI specific instructions: shorten, deepen, simplify, strengthen ending, or add an example. The refined version appears as a child node below your original — non-destructive, so you can compare both.
• More Like This — generate a variation in a similar style, added as a child node.
• AI Compare — generate fresh AI-written alternatives and add them as child nodes, so you can compare different angles with your own writing.
• AI Translate — get a translation to practice bilingually. The body panel switches to show the translated version with an EN/ES toggle.
• Tags — add tags to organize and filter your work. Tap + Tag on any node, or use the Tags section in the action modal. Tags appear as colored chips and power the filter bar above the tree. Learn more →

Every comment you have written

Comments in the menu is the master list — everything you have written, newest first, with the tabs across the top narrowing it to drafts, ones marked ready, ones you have delivered, and ones that were never filed anywhere. Search, tags and sort all work on the list you are looking at, and the address bar keeps them, so a narrowed list is a link you can come back to.

Switch List to Grouped and the same comments nest under where they were written: the publication, then the article or the week, then the part, then the paragraph. A heading that forty comments share appears once, with forty under it. Click a row and it opens in the workbench, in the room it was written in.

Where a comment came from

Open any comment and the line above it reads like a trail — Life and Ministry Meeting Workbook, September–October 2026 › September 14–20 › Spiritual Gems. Each part of it is a link, and each goes somewhere different: the publication, the week, and the exact paragraph your comment answers.

Those names come from your own copy of the publication, so they only appear on a device that has it imported. If yours does not, the list says which publication is missing and offers to take you to the library to add it, rather than leaving the trail short with no explanation.

Tidying the list

Press Select on the comment list and the rows become selectable. Tick as many as you like — or Select all, which takes everything the current filters show, not everything you own — then:

• Archive — puts them away. Archived comments leave every view except the Archived tab, where Put back returns them. Nothing is lost.
• Delete — asks once more, by number, and then it is gone along with its versions and its coaching history. There is no undo.

Reordering and organizing

Use keyboard shortcuts or the tools menu to organize your comments:

• Alt+Up / Alt+Down — move a node up or down among its siblings.
• Tab / Shift+Tab — nest deeper or promote to a higher level.
• Move Up / Move Down — also available in the action modal under the Move section.

Finalizing

When you're satisfied with a comment, tap ⋮ and choose Ready from the quick actions bar. A green badge appears confirming your comment is finalized. The label adapts to your context: Ready, Practiced, or Prepared.

Sharing a comment

Open the tools menu on a comment node and tap Share to generate a shareable link. This lets others read your finalized comment without needing an account.

Meeting prep export

Click the Print button (🖨) in the outliner toolbar to open a branded prep sheet in a new tab. Your finalized comments are organized by paragraph with coaching scores and speaking times. Use your browser's Print or Save as PDF to create a clean document for your meeting.