Overview
The Inspector is a single, right-docked panel that explains everything you select on the board — cards and dependency links — without ever leaving the canvas. It replaces the back-and-forth of opening Jira issues in new tabs, scrolling through link tables, or building spreadsheets to compare related items.
Open the Inspector once with ⌘/Ctrl + I (or click any card or link), and use it as your single working surface for inspection, comparison, and triage.
What you can do
| Capability | Where |
|---|---|
| Inspect a single card | Click any card → Cards tab opens with rich detail (status, assignee, project, key, child count, fix versions). |
| Inspect a single dependency link | Click any link or aggregate edge → Links tab opens with source, target, link type, and underlying constituents. |
| Inspect mixed selections | Select cards and links → header shows two tabs: Cards (N) and Links (M). Switch between them without losing either selection. |
| Compare two or three items | Pin items to the Pin Tray (up to 3) and switch between them with one click. Cards and links can be pinned together. |
| Triage a multi-selection | Select several cards (Shift-click, ⌘/Ctrl-click, marquee, search, or ⌘/Ctrl + A) → the Cards tab becomes a breakdown panel with counts by status, type, and assignee. |
| Highlight on the canvas | Toggle 🔦 Highlight to outline pinned items on the board without changing the selection. |
| Locate on the canvas | Click Locate on any pinned item or constituent link to pan the board to it — selection is preserved. |
| Hide and re-open the rail | Press ⌘/Ctrl + I or click ×. Selection and pins survive. |
How it works
Auto-show on first selection, sticky-hide on close
The Inspector starts hidden so the board has full screen real estate. The first time you click a card or a link, it opens automatically. If you close it (×), it stays closed even when the selection changes — you bring it back manually with ⌘/Ctrl + I or by clicking the toolbar button.
This sticky hide model matches modern design tools (Figma, Lucidchart): the user controls when the rail appears, never the selection.
Note: Closing the Inspector never clears your selection or pins. Both survive panel toggles, semantic-zoom changes, and tab switches.
One panel, two tabs
| Selection | Header behavior |
|---|---|
| Nothing selected | Generic title “Inspector” with empty-state hint “Click a card or a link to inspect it.” |
| Only cards selected | Single label: Cards (N) |
| Only links selected | Single label: Links (M) |
| Cards and links selected | Two tabs: Cards (N) and Links (M) — the active tab follows the kind you most recently interacted with. |
Tabs let you switch between card and link inspection without losing either selection.
Selection semantics
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Click a card or link | Replace current selection with that item. |
| Shift + click | Add the item to the current selection. |
| ⌘/Ctrl + click | Toggle the item in the selection (add if absent, remove if present). |
| Click empty canvas | Clear all selections (Inspector shows empty state but stays open). |
| ⌘/Ctrl + click empty canvas | No-op — protects in-progress selections from accidental clearing. |
Card Inspector
When the Cards tab is active, the panel content depends on how many cards are selected.
Single card
Shows a rich detail view of the issue with status, summary, project, assignee, key, fix versions, child count, and other relevant fields. Use 📌 Pin to add it to the Pin Tray.
Multiple cards (breakdown)
Shows a summary banner with counts and breakdowns (status, type, assignee), followed by a list of the selected issues. Click any issue in the list to “promote” it to the active single-card view inside the panel without changing the canvas selection.
Tip: Combine the Cmd/Ctrl + A shortcut (select all visible at the current zoom level) with the Cards tab to get an instant standup-ready summary of the row, column, or sprint you’re looking at.
Link Inspector
When the Links tab is active, the panel explains the dependency you clicked.
Direct link
Shows source, target, link type, and direction (outward / inward) for a single Jira link.
Aggregate (rolled-up) edge
When you click a rolled-up Epic-to-Epic or Story-to-Story edge — see Dependency Roll-ups — the Inspector explains why the rolled-up edge exists:
- A plain-English summary banner at the top describing the dependency in one sentence.
- Depth chips to filter constituent links by descendant level (e.g. Stories only, Sub-tasks only).
- A risk-sorted list of constituent links with status lozenges and risk badges (Critical / At risk / OK) — blocked or in-progress items float to the top.
- Per-row actions: View at <level> level (switch the board to the level where the underlying link exists as a real edge, select that exact link, and frame both endpoints — the label becomes View on board when both endpoints already sit at the current level), Locate src/tgt (pan to ancestor on the board), Open src/tgt (open the underlying issue in Jira).
- Bulk actions in the header: Copy keys, Copy JQL (
key in (…)), Open all.
Drilling down and back. The View at <level> action is a true round-trip: when you switch back to the level where you started, Board Studio restores the exact selection, focused link, and Inspector view you had before drilling — so you can explore an underlying Story-to-Story dependency in detail and then return to the Epic-level overview without losing context.
Note: The drill-down action is hidden for cross-level constituents (e.g. a link spanning a Story and a Sub-task) — these cannot be displayed as a real edge in any single-level view. The Locate and Open actions remain available on every row.
Pin Tray — compare without losing context
The Pin Tray holds up to 3 pinned items per hierarchy level. Pinned cards and pinned links coexist in the same tray.
| Action | Result |
|---|---|
| Click 📌 Pin on the active item | Add it to the Pin Tray. |
| Click a pinned chip | Re-focus the panel on that pinned item. |
| Click Locate on a pinned chip | Pan the board to that item without changing the selection. |
| Toggle 🔦 Highlight pinned | Outline all pinned cards / links on the canvas. Toggle off to clear the highlight without removing the pins. |
| Unpin | Remove the item from the tray. |
Pins survive: panel close (⌘/Ctrl + I), tab switching, semantic-zoom changes, canvas selection changes. They are scoped per hierarchy level so each zoom level has its own pin context.
Tip: Pin two competing dependencies (e.g. a technical blocker and a governance gate) plus the downstream Epic they both block — three pinned items, one comparison surface.
Keyboard shortcuts
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
| ⌘/Ctrl + I | Toggle the Inspector rail (open / close). |
| ⌘/Ctrl + A | Select every visible card at the current zoom level. The Cards tab updates to a breakdown of the full selection. |
| ⌘/Ctrl + Shift + A | Deselect everything (alias for Escape with no active highlight). |
| Shift + click | Add an item to the selection. |
| ⌘/Ctrl + click | Toggle an item in the selection. |
| Esc | Priority-based escape — first cancels any active highlight preview, then clears the canvas selection. |
Why it matters
| Pain point | How the Inspector solves it |
|---|---|
| Opening Jira issues in five new tabs to compare them | Pin three items in the Pin Tray and switch between them with one click — no tabs, no context loss. |
| Building a spreadsheet to break down a row’s status | ⌘/Ctrl + A → breakdown panel — instant counts by status, type, and assignee. |
| Losing your selection when you click somewhere else | Sticky-hide rail and explicit close button — the canvas selection is sacred. |
| Two different inspectors for cards and links (different layouts, different actions, different shortcuts) | One unified rail. Cards and links share the same actions (Pin, Highlight, Locate), the same Pin Tray, and the same keyboard economy. |
| Re-opening “what was I looking at” after a zoom change | Pins are preserved across semantic-zoom changes. The panel re-anchors instead of disappearing. |
Related
- Dependency Roll-ups — Click rolled-up edges to drill into their underlying child links.
- Search — Multi-select results from search instantly populate the Inspector breakdown.
- Focus Mode — Inspect any card or link, then promote your selection to a Focus Mode subgraph.
- Semantic Zoom — Pins, selection, and the open / closed state of the rail survive zoom changes.