Link widgets and set up wires

A wire is a line you draw from one widget to another on the same desk. It tells PlexiDesk how the two belong together: whether one is background for the other, whether one should be rewritten into the other by AI, or whether one should simply copy into the other.

The widget you start from is the source. The widget you click is the target. There are three kinds of wire:

Before you start

• Plans: wires work on every plan.
• AI: Context and Mirror wires need no AI, with one exception: a wire into a Table is filled in by the table's AI. Transform wires always use AI. When you are signed in, AI runs on your PlexiDesk credits; you can also use your own Anthropic key. See AI credits and where your AI runs Coming soon and Add your own API keys.
• Both widgets on the same desk. To pull in something from another desk, add a Portal widget Coming soon for that desk and wire the Portal.

Draw a wire

1. Point at the widget you want to start from. The buttons in its title bar appear.
2. Click the link button. Its tooltip says Click, then click another widget to connect them. On a Section, use the link button in the section's label bar instead (Link from this section).
3. A banner at the top of the desk says Linking from and the widget's name, and a dashed line follows your pointer.
4. Click the widget you want to connect to.
5. The How should this connect? box opens where you clicked. Choose Feed in as context, Transform it or Keep in sync.

If you choose Transform it, the Live wire editor opens straight away so you can say what the transform should do. See Set up a Transform wire below.

To stop before you click a target, press Esc, click × on the banner, or click an empty part of the desk.

If you close the How should this connect? box without choosing, by pressing Esc, clicking × or clicking somewhere else, the wire stays as a Context wire. You can change it at any time by clicking the line.

You can connect widgets inside a Section, a Section itself and pinned widgets, as well as ordinary widgets on the desk.

A faster way: Create & link

Right-click a widget and point at Create & link to make a new widget beside it that is already wired to it. The choices include Automate with an agent, Send to a URL, Sticky, Note, Markdown, Page, File, Field, Table and Color. The new wire is a Context wire, which you can change by clicking the line. See Right-click menus.

Read the lines on your desk

Each kind of wire looks different, so you can see at a glance what a desk is doing:

• Context is a thin dashed line.
• Transform and Mirror are solid lines with an arrowhead pointing at the target.
• A paused wire is a faint dotted line.
• A wire that is running glows, with a pulse travelling from source to target.

A small round badge sits in the middle of every line: a link icon for Context, a sparkle for Transform and two circling arrows for Mirror. Point at the badge to see how the wire is doing:

• running… while it works.
• hasn't run yet, with a small blue dot on the badge.
• stale, source changed since it last ran, with a small amber dot.
• off when it is paused.
• last run failed, followed by the reason. The badge turns red.
• When everything is up to date, the tooltip names the wire and when it last ran, for example Transform wire (ran 5m ago).

Change a wire in the Live wire editor

Click a line, or the badge in its middle, to open the Live wire editor.

At the top are three buttons to change the wire's type: Context, Transform and Mirror, with a line underneath that explains the one you have chosen. Below that, the controls depend on the type.

For a Transform wire:

• Recipes give you a ready-made instruction in one click: Extract action items, Summarize, Pull key points, Turn into a table, Draft a reply, Rewrite clearer and Find dates & deadlines. Clicking a recipe fills in the instruction and runs the wire straight away. Recipes are offered when the source holds text: a Sticky, Note, Markdown, Page, Card, Document, Living Doc, File or link, Browser, Voice note or Desk agent.
• The instruction box (it suggests "e.g. extract action items") is where you write your own instruction. Press Enter to save it and run the wire.
• Run now runs the wire once, immediately.
• Auto-run, when ticked, runs the wire by itself whenever the source changes. Untick it to pause the wire and run it only when you click Run now.

For a Mirror wire:

• Keep target mirrored, when ticked, copies the source into the target on every change. Untick it to pause.

For every wire:

• Recent activity lists the latest writes the wire made into the target, up to six: Wrote from, Copied from or Delivered from the source, how long ago, and the start of the text it wrote. Revert this write puts the target back the way it was just before that write.
• Unlink removes the wire. Both widgets stay on the desk.

Close the editor with ×, or click anywhere else on the desk.

Set up a Transform wire

This example turns meeting notes into a list of action items that keeps itself up to date.

1. Put a Note on the desk for your meeting notes, and a Page beside it for the action items.
2. Draw a wire from the Note to the Page, as in Draw a wire.
3. In How should this connect?, choose Transform it. The Live wire editor opens.
4. Click the Extract action items recipe, or type your own instruction and press Enter.
5. The result is written into the Page.

From now on, whenever you edit the Note, the wire runs again a moment after you stop typing, and the Page is updated. A burst of quick edits becomes one run, not many.

What a Transform can read

• Text widgets such as a Sticky, Note, Markdown, Page or Card: whatever is written in them.
• A Browser widget: the text of the page as it is showing, including pages you are signed in to.
• A File or link widget: the text inside a PDF (including a scanned PDF, which is read on your device), a Word .docx file, a spreadsheet or a text file.
• A Portal widget: the desk it shows.
• A Desk agent: its latest output.

A Transform reads up to the first 8,000 characters of its source. For a very long source, point the wire at a summary of it instead. Pictures and video have no text, so they cannot feed a Transform.

What the target receives

A Transform or Mirror wire replaces what is in the target each time it runs, apart from a Table, which is updated row by row. Keep anything you want to hold on to in a different widget.

Spreadsheets, slide decks and widgets that hold settings rather than text, such as a Timer, Color or Section, cannot receive text from a wire. If you point a Transform or Mirror wire at one, its badge turns red and the tooltip says so. Point it at a Page, Note, Card, Sticky, Table or Document instead.

Widgets that work with wires

Some widgets are made to be wired:

• Desk agent. Every widget you wire into an agent becomes one of its inputs, whatever the wire type. A wire drawn out of an agent delivers the agent's latest output into the target. See Desk agent widget.
• Send to a URL. Wire any widget into it, and its content is sent to the web address you set every time it changes, whatever the wire type. See Send to a URL widget Coming soon.
• Receive from a URL. What another service sends to its address flows along any wire drawn out of it. See Receive from a URL widget Coming soon.
• Portal. Wire widgets into a Portal that has no desk chosen and it becomes a Rollup that combines them into one feed. A Portal wired into an agent gives the agent the whole desk it shows. See Portal widget Coming soon.
• Custom (Pro and Team plans). A Custom widget can read the widgets you wire into it, and updates when they change. See Custom widget: build your own tool.

To see everything on a desk that runs by itself, open the Automations panel. See See what runs on its own on a desk.

Tips

• Wires do their work while the desk is open. They respond to changes you make on the desk in PlexiDesk.
• Changes never loop back. When a wire writes into a widget, that write does not set off the widget's own wires straight away, so two wires pointing at each other cannot bounce a change back and forth. To pass a change on along the next wire in a chain, open that wire and click Run now.
• One wire each way. Between two widgets you can have one wire in each direction. Linking the same pair again in the same direction opens the existing wire.
• Tidy keeps linked widgets together. Tidy in the desk header and Clean up in the tool rail place widgets joined by wires next to each other, so the lines stay short. See Tidy, auto-arrange and Smart Stack.
• Deleting a widget removes its wires.

Common questions

I linked the wrong widgets. How do I undo it?

Press ⌘ Z on a Mac or Ctrl Z on Windows straight away to remove the wire you just drew. At any other time, click the line and choose Unlink.

The badge on my wire is red. What do I do?

Point at the badge to read the reason. The usual fixes are:

• The Transform has no instruction. Open the wire and click a recipe, or type an instruction and press Enter.
• The source is a picture or a video. Use a source that holds text, such as a Note, Page, Browser or File or link widget with a PDF, Word file or spreadsheet.
• The source is a File or link widget on a Mirror wire. Change the wire to Transform, which reads the file's text.
• The target cannot take text. Point the wire at a Page, Note, Card, Sticky, Table or Document.
• AI is not set up. Sign in to use PlexiDesk credits, or add your own Anthropic key. See AI settings.

Then open the wire and click Run now.

The badge has an amber dot. What does it mean?

The source has changed since the wire last ran, so the target may be out of date. For a Transform wire, open it and click Run now. A Mirror wire copies again the next time you edit the source.

Does a Context wire do anything on its own?

No. A Context wire runs nothing. It tells the target what to read when it works: a Desk agent reads its inputs when it runs, and a Custom widget or a Rollup portal reads what is wired into it. The one exception is a wire into Send to a URL, which sends the source's content whenever it changes.

How do I pause a wire without deleting it?

Open the wire and untick Auto-run (Transform) or Keep target mirrored (Mirror). You can also use the wire's switch in the Automations panel. See See what runs on its own on a desk.

How do I get back something a wire overwrote?

Open the wire and look under Recent activity. Click Revert this write on the write you want to undo. For a Document, you can also restore an earlier version from its version history. See Version history Coming soon.

Related tasks

• See what runs on its own on a desk
• Desk agent widget
• Keep a running summary with a desk agent Coming soon
• Send desk updates to other services and receive events back Coming soon
• The controls on every widget