An item is one piece of work or one thought: a task, a bug, a retro note, an idea. Items belong to the document and are stored apart from its tabs; a Plan board and a Plan card only show them. That is why the same item can appear on two boards, and why moving a card moves it everywhere.
What an Item Has
- A number, such as #12: given once when the item is made and never reused, so you can say "#12" in a meeting.
- A type: Project, Task, Note, Idea or Action, or one your document adds (Card Types). Each has its own colour and glyph, and offers the fields that suit it. Bug Triage and Sprint boards bring in a ready-made Bug type. Change the type at the top of the card panel.
- Fields: title, description, status, assignee, priority, labels, estimate, start date, due date, checklist, votes and comments, as the type offers them, plus any custom fields (a Task's Parent, the project it sits under, is one). The status is what places an item in a board's column.
- Flagged and Archived: marks set from the card's menu (Cards).
- Who made it and who last changed it, shown at the foot of the card panel's Details.
Always Up to Date
Every change reaches everyone with the document open at once, whichever tab or board they are looking at. Two people changing different fields of one item never undo each other's work; if two people change the same field, the later change wins.
Undo takes back your own item changes in the order you made them, mixed in with your canvas edits. Votes and comments are outside Undo.
Who Can Do What
- Anyone who can open the document can read its items. Someone on a link to a single tab sees only the items that tab shows.
- Editors add, change, move and delete items.
- Participants add, change and move items, and vote and comment on cards, but can't delete, trash or archive them.
- Viewers only read: they can't vote or comment.
Offline, Copies and Exports
- An offline document keeps its items in your browser with everything else. Sync Document takes them to your account; Take Offline brings them back down.
- Duplicate copies the items with the document, numbers and all.
- The
.livediagramfile in Google Drive carries the items, and a document imported from it gets them back. - A copy taken from the Community leaves cards' comments out.
- Exported images and PDFs draw boards and cards as they are.
- Deleting the document for good deletes its items with it.
Limits
- A document holds up to 2,000 items, and each item's fields up to 16 KB.
- A title is up to 500 characters, a description up to 10,000, an estimate 0 to 999.
- An item holds up to 12 labels and 50 checklist steps, and a card up to 200 comments.
Scripts and AI Tools
Items have their own API, so your scripts and AI tools can list, add, change, move and delete them as you: through the livediagram API with an API token, the command-line tool, or an AI tool connected over MCP. Items are named by their number (#12), and columns, card types and fields by their names, as your boards show them. AI tools can also add boards and change card types. An agent's change shows on everyone's boards the moment it is made.
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