The Editor is where you build and revise lessons. You can arrange pages, edit tiles, work with the Agent, preview the learner experience, and publish.
If you’ve used the Mindsmith Agent to generate your lesson from a Storyboard, this is the place where your first draft appears. You’ll see pre-built pages with text, visuals, and interactive tiles that you can refine and customize. Lessons imported directly from a document or SCORM package also open here after the import finishes.
If you choose not to use AI, the Editor opens as a blank canvas. From there, you can add pages, drop in content, and design interactives manually.
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How the Editor Fits into the Workflow
Layout of the Editor
Side Panels
Keyboard Shortcuts
Collaboration in the Editor
Publishing from the Editor
FAQ's
How the Editor fits into the workflow
Storyboard → Think of this as the blueprint. It sets the lesson’s parameters (style, tone, objectives, page outlines, AI generation settings). When you generate from the Storyboard, the AI creates a full draft lesson with text, images, and interactivity.
Editor → This is the workshop. Generated and imported lessons open here for refinement, or you can start with a blank canvas and build with pages and tiles.
If you skipped AI generation, the Editor gives you a blank canvas to build from scratch using pages and tiles.
For more about generating lessons, see Creating a lesson with the Mindsmith Agent.
Layout of the Editor
There are five areas to know:
Top Left: Switch between lesson views and rename your lesson.
Left Sidebar (Filmstrip): Organize and navigate your lesson structure.
Main Canvas: Build out each page with text, media, and interactive tiles.
Bottom Bar (the Agent): Add tiles, launch AI builders, and chat with the AI about the current page.
Top Right: Manage lesson-level controls like themes, settings, sharing, and comments.
Let's look at each in detail:
Top left: lesson views
Click the lesson title to rename it.
Storyboard → the blueprint behind an AI-generated lesson. This tab appears once a lesson has a storyboard.
Editor → the page-by-page workshop. This is where you'll spend most of your time.
Branching → a visual map for lessons that use branching navigation. This tab appears when branching is available for the lesson.
The panel icon expands the Filmstrip when it's tucked away.
The language button (🌐) at the top of the Filmstrip shows the language your lesson is currently in. On Enterprise plans, clicking it opens Manage Translations, where you add languages and review translated versions. On other plans it opens Settings, where you can change the lesson's language.
Left sidebar: pages and sections
The left panel is your lesson’s navigation and structure manager.
Here you can:
Scroll through all lesson pages.
Click "+ New Page" to insert a Blank Page, Section Divider, Title Page, Text and Image layout, or one of your Saved Page Templates.
Drag and drop pages to reorder them.
Open a page's Options menu (...), or right-click its thumbnail, to edit the title, turn it into a section divider, copy, paste, duplicate, save it as a page template, hand it to the AI Agent, or delete it.
Use Section Dividers to break a long lesson into sections. Click the arrow next to a section divider to collapse the section in your workspace.
Main canvas: page and tile editing
The center canvas is where you build. Each page is made of tiles: modular content elements.
To add a tile, click + Add tile in the bottom bar and pick from these categories:
Text → Text, Title, Heading, Subheading, Quote, Table, List, Note, Code, Line Break, Spacer, Section Marker, and Timeline. The newer tile design also offers a Transition tile for shaped color transitions between rows.
Media → Image, Image Comparison, Image Carousel, Video, Audio, File Download, Custom Code, and Embed.
Question → Multiple Choice, Short Answer, Feedback, Select Multiple, Ranking, Matching, and Sorting.
Interactive → Buttons, Flashcards, Accordion, Tabs, Process, Flashcards Carousel, Hot Button, and Chart. Some workspaces may also have Code Activity.
Two creation tools have their own buttons beside the tile menu:
Scenario → opens the Agent to help build a branching decision experience.
Video → adds an editable video tile.
To edit a tile, select it. A small toolbar appears above the tile:
Click directly into the tile to change text or replace media.
Move (✥) → drag the tile to reorder it, or place it side-by-side with another tile.
Palette (🎨) → on tiles that support styling, opens the tile's settings panel with the theme section already expanded, for colors and styling on just that tile.
Edit → opens the same settings panel for the tile's content and behavior options. On Experience and Conversation tiles this button reads Edit experience or Edit conversation and opens the full-screen builder instead.
Plus (+) → on tiles made of repeating parts, adds another one: a choice, a flashcard, a tab, a matching pair, a step.
Three-dot menu (⋯) → tile actions: set the tile's width (S, M, L, or Full), duplicate, copy, paste below, or delete.
Press Cmd + K (Mac) or Ctrl + K (Windows) to open the AI Agent already focused on the tile you have selected.
For readable pages:
Keep pages focused. Two or three tiles per page works best for readability, especially on mobile.
Create a table tile by copying a table from Excel, Google Sheets, or CSV and pasting it onto the canvas.
Bottom bar: the Agent
The bar at the bottom of the Editor is both your content picker and the Mindsmith Agent. It has two states, and which buttons you see depends on which one you're in.
Collapsed: the default, a single slim bar:
Quick Add → drag or click to add a standard Text, Image, or Video tile.
Scenario / Video → start a branching scenario with the Agent or add an editable video tile.
+ Add tile → opens the full tile menu. Start typing to search, use the arrow keys to move through results, and press Enter to insert.
Undo / Redo → step back and forward through your recent changes.
Ask the Agent → type into the input to rewrite text, draft quizzes, or add interactivity to the current page.
Expanded: click the input field, or send the Agent a message, and the panel grows to show your chat history plus a fuller set of tools:
Microphone → speak your request instead of typing. Once you start typing, this becomes the send button.
Add resource (+) → attach a file, choose media, or Reference Lesson to point the Agent at another lesson you've already built.
Narration → open the narration panel to add or adjust voiceover. Requires a paid plan.
Objectives → review the learning objectives tied to the current page.
Accessibility → scan the lesson for accessibility problems and fix them with the Agent.
Skills → save your own reusable instructions and re-run them on any lesson. Admins can create skills for the whole organization.
Mode → choose from the Agent modes available to your workspace. The available choices depend on your plan, feature access, and your organization's AI settings.
Web search → let the Agent look up current information while it works. This appears only if your organization has enabled web search, and you can turn it off for yourself.
New Chat → clear the conversation and start the Agent fresh.
Feedback → tell us how the Agent did on that request.
Opening Narration, Objectives, or Accessibility collapses the Agent and opens that panel beside your lesson.
Drag the top edge of the expanded panel up or down to resize the chat history, or click the minus (−) button to collapse it again. The panel stays fixed at the bottom center of the screen and can't be moved.
Adding Custom Code tiles from the full tile menu requires an Enterprise plan.
Top right: global controls
At the top-right of the Editor, you’ll find lesson-level controls:
Collaborator avatars → see who else is in the lesson right now.
Version History → restore past versions of your lesson.
Comments → leave and review inline feedback with your team.
Analytics (📊) → view learner performance data and engagement metrics. Requires a paid plan.
Settings (⚙️) → four tabs: Preview (thumbnail and how the lesson is presented), Learning (how learners move through it), Grading, and Certificate.
More options (⋯) → Translate, Narration, Logo, Move Lesson, Duplicate Lesson, Version History, and Move to Trash. Organization admins can also save supported lesson types as organization templates.
Theme (🖌️) → adjust fonts, colors, and logos for the whole lesson.
Share → publish your lesson or export it.
Preview (▶) → open the lesson exactly as learners will see it.
Before publishing:
Open the Theme tool early. Setting your logo, fonts, and colors upfront ensures a consistent look across every page.
Preview frequently. A page that looks balanced in the Editor might feel crowded in learner mode. Previewing helps catch formatting issues early.
Side panels
Several tools open as floating panels you can drag around the canvas. Only one is open at a time, and closing it returns you to normal editing.
Theme → fonts, colors, and logo for the whole lesson.
Tile → settings for the one tile you selected.
Narration → voice and audio settings for a specific tile.
Comments → the feedback thread for the page or tile you're on.
Objectives → the learning objectives tied to the current page.
Accessibility → scans your lesson for accessibility problems such as missing alt text, and offers to fix them with the Agent in one click.
Run the Accessibility panel before publishing so you can fix issues before learners open the lesson.
Keyboard shortcuts
Action | Mac | Windows |
Undo / Redo |
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Copy / Paste |
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Cut |
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Duplicate |
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Delete selected tile or page |
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Open the Agent on the current selection |
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There is no save shortcut because Mindsmith saves your work automatically.
Collaboration in the Editor
The Editor supports real-time teamwork:
Click the Comments icon in the top right to add notes to a page, a specific tile, or the overall lesson.
See live avatars in the top toolbar to know exactly who is editing alongside you.
Watch live cursors and real-time updates as your teammates build and refine content.
Subject matter experts, instructional designers, and reviewers can work in the Editor together without passing separate files back and forth.
Publishing from the Editor
When your lesson is ready, click Share in the top-right corner. From here you can:
Publish a public link for learners.
Send a review link for feedback.
Use the export and embed options available to your workspace.
For more about each method, see Sharing and Publishing.
FAQs
Does the Editor autosave my work?
Yes. Every change saves automatically to the cloud as you work.
Can I duplicate a page or tile?
Yes. For a tile, select it and choose Duplicate from the three-dot menu (⋯) in the toolbar above it. For a page, use the ... menu on the page thumbnail in the Left Sidebar, or right-click the thumbnail.
You can also do it from the keyboard. With a tile or page selected, Cmd + D (Mac) or Ctrl + D (Windows) duplicates it in place. To put a copy somewhere else, use Cmd + C / Ctrl + C to copy and Cmd + V / Ctrl + V to paste: this works across lessons too, so you can copy a page out of one lesson and paste it into another.
Can I undo edits?
Yes. You can undo and redo actions using standard keyboard shortcuts: Ctrl + Z and Ctrl + Y on Windows, or Cmd + Z and Cmd + Shift + Z on Mac.
What is the Storyboard, and do I have to use it?
The Storyboard is the planning step behind an Agent-generated lesson: it holds the lesson plan, objectives, and page outline, and the Agent builds the lesson from it. It's optional. If you describe a lesson in the creation flow, Mindsmith creates a Storyboard for you and shows it as a tab at the top. A direct document or SCORM import does not necessarily create a Storyboard. If you start from a blank lesson, you build pages yourself in the Editor.
Can I save and reuse a theme?
Yes. Themes can be saved in your workspace settings and instantly applied to any future lessons.
Can I save custom page templates? Yes. After designing the page, open its ... menu in the left sidebar and select Create Page Template. You can then reuse the layout.
Where is the text formatting toolbar? The rich text toolbar appears when you select text in a tile. It follows the selection and cannot be moved to a fixed position.
How do I delete a page? Click the ... menu on the page thumbnail in the Left Sidebar (Filmstrip) and select Delete. You can also right-click on a page thumbnail for the same options.
Where is the AI Agent panel? The AI Agent is fixed at the bottom center of the editor. You can expand it by clicking the input field, and resize the chat history area by dragging the top edge of the panel up or down. The panel cannot be moved to a different position on the screen.
Can I talk to the Agent instead of typing? Yes. Click the input field to expand the Agent panel, then click the microphone icon and speak your request: Mindsmith transcribes it into the Agent for you.
What's Next? Suggested Reading
Now that you know your way around the Editor, try:
Page Types: types of lesson content
AI Prompting Tips: getting the most from AI features
Mindsmith Agent in the Editor: work with the Agent while you edit
Interactive Tiles: flashcards, accordions, tabs, and more
Branching Scenarios: build interactive decision trees