Tracking foreshadowing with notes: setup to payoff

In one line: how to pair a setup note with its payoff, so a planted detail is tracked from the page you plant it on to the page it comes back.

Why pair them at all

A twelve-chapter draft holds more planted details than you can carry in your head. In chapter 2 you let him turn a page with the glove still on, and at that moment you know it is for chapter 8. Three months later you come back to revise, decide the sentence is doing nothing, and cut it.

That is not a memory problem, it is a length problem — nobody holds a whole book's unpaid debts at once. So Slima lets you tie the planting and the delivery together as one thing: each side shows the other, and the ones you have not settled are countable at a glance.

Two categories

Two of the four note categories exist for this:

• Setup — something is planted here. Write down what it is, and what you are not allowed to explain yet.
• Payoff — this is where the planted thing is delivered.

The other two categories, Note and To-do, take no part in pairing.

Making the pair

From planting to paired

Open the chapter where you plant it New note, category Setup Press Link payoff on the card Pick a payoff note, or create one

The pairing is two-way: once linked, each card shows the other.

1. Open the chapter where the detail goes in, then open the notes panel (Ctrl + Shift + N).
2. New note, category Setup, and leave the scope on Chapter so it travels with that chapter instead of floating at book level.

   Scope is decided when you create the note and cannot be changed afterwards. Create it from the chapter you want it tied to.

3. Save it. A dashed Link payoff button appears on the card. Press it.
4. Select payoff note opens, listing every payoff note that is not already paired.
   • Already wrote the payoff note? Click it.
   • Haven't? Press Create payoff & link at the bottom. Slima makes an empty book-level payoff note, titled simply "Payoff", and pairs it immediately — then you open it and give it a real title and body.

Once they are paired

Both cards grow an amber badge carrying the other note's title, with an arrow on the end.

Click the badge to jump. If the partner is tied to a different file, Slima opens that file in a tab first, then scrolls its card into view and highlights it for a moment. And if the partner would be hidden by your current filters — you are on the Chapter level, or the wrong category tab, or it is already marked done and collapsed — the jump loosens those first, so you never get the click that appears to do nothing.

Beside the panel title a lightbulb appears, showing paired out of total setups.

Unlinking and re-linking

• The broken-link icon next to the badge is Unlink. It clears both sides.
• To move a setup to a different payoff, just link the new one. The old partner is released automatically, so you never end up with a badge pointing at nothing.
• A payoff with no setup shows No setup linked on the card. That means one of two things: you wrote a delivery without recording where it was planted, or the pair simply has not been made yet.

Closing it out

Once the payoff is actually on the page, mark both notes as done — hover the card, press the check. They sink into the collapsed Done group at the bottom with their titles struck through; the content stays and still expands.

This is not only tidying. Notes marked done are no longer attached to the messages you send the AI, so marking one done is also how you take a thread out of the conversation. See Which notes the AI sees.

There is a pair in the sample book

Ink Tide ships with one already written and — deliberately — not yet paired, so you can make the link yourself once:

Note	Category	Attached to
Setup: the grey glove	Setup	Chapter 02 - The Word Bureau
Payoff: the glove comes off	Payoff	Chapter 08 - Pei Zhao

The setup note says: Pei Zhao never takes the glove off; chapter 8 reveals the burn scar underneath, and chapter 2 gets exactly one action — turning pages with the glove on — and no explanation. The payoff note says: end of chapter, before the lamp goes out, and never describe the scar, only how long he looks at it.

That is what a good setup note does. It does not just remember to come back; it remembers what you are not allowed to write yet.

When not to open one

• Skip it if the thing pays off in the same scene. Setup notes are for distances you cannot see across.
• Don't open one for every image. Twenty setups you never look at is worse than none — the lightbulb stays red and you start ignoring it.
• Nothing checks for you. No process scans your draft in the background and warns you about an unpaid setup. The lightbulb only counts what you recorded yourself. Asking the AI to read across chapters and find the loose ends is a thing you do on purpose — see Which notes the AI sees.
• Pairing is one-to-one. One setup, one payoff. If something has to echo in three places, say so in the note body rather than forcing three pairs.

On a phone

Inside the Notes tab there is a Foreshadowing tab that counts setups and payoffs together (the desktop Foreshadow tab counts setups only). Pairing and unlinking both work there.

Related

• Docs: The notes panel
• Docs: Which notes the AI sees
• Docs: Beat board overview
• Docs: Timeline overview