Every delineation paragraph you read in a Natal, Predictive or Synastry report — and every "Patterns this chart presents that no enabled section delineates yet" gap you can see on the Report Manager's Coverage gaps list — traces back to a row authored here. The Workbench is a Pro tool: opening it from either entry point below is gated the same way as any other Pro feature, and a Free-tier click shows an upgrade prompt instead.
Opening it
Two menu paths reach it, and they behave differently once you're inside:
Dashboard → Tools → Interpretation Workbench
Navigates away from the Dashboard to a dedicated full-page Workbench. Its title bar's back button reads ← Dashboard.
Expanded Chart View → Tools → Interpretation Workbench
Opens the Workbench as an overlay on top of the live Expanded Chart screen instead of navigating away — your exact multi-wheel configuration, timeline offset and open panels are preserved untouched underneath and reappear exactly as you left them the moment you close the overlay. Its back button reads ← Expanded Chart to match.
Like the rest of the app, the Workbench's own top menu bar is hidden while it's open — covered on the Themes page — since Manage data, described below, takes its place as the strip directly under the title bar.
The corpus model, in brief
Four catalogue concepts organise every piece of interpretation text. Knowing them makes the rest of this page — both the editor and the new Manage data bar — easier to follow:
| Concept | What it is |
|---|---|
| Family | A broad category patterns are grouped under, e.g. inter_aspect for
planet-to-planet aspects. Stored as a short code on every pattern. |
| Source | An interpretation corpus — a distinct "voice" or authorial set of delineations, each with its own short code, title, author and an Enabled/Disabled switch. Report Manager's own Source picker (see Report Manager) chooses between these same sources, or blends every enabled one. |
| Pattern | One specific astrological condition a detector can recognise — a Mars–Venus square, a planet in the 10th house, a Stellium — identified by an immutable Key that has to match exactly what the detection engine emits. |
| Topic (chapter) | A life-area tag — the chapter a section of delineation text is filed under in the finished report — with its own ordinal position and an optional context. |
A Section is the actual authored delineation for one pattern, in one source — which is what the worklist and editor below work with directly; families, sources, patterns and topics are the shelving the sections sit on.
The worklist
The left card is how you find a pattern to author or review:
Search
Filters the list live by key or friendly label as you type.
Family & Status filters
Narrow by family, and by whether the pattern already has a section for the currently selected source — All / Authored / Unauthored.
Corpus source
Picks which source's sections the ●/○ markers and the editor below reflect. Switching source can turn an authored pattern hollow and vice versa — the same pattern can be written for one source and still missing from another.
The pattern list
Each row shows a filled ● marker when the selected source already has a section for that pattern, or a hollow ○ when it doesn't — your live to-author list for whichever source is selected — plus the pattern's key, family and, for templated patterns, a "templated" tag.
A summary line under the list totals the current filtered count against the source's overall unauthored count, e.g. "128 of 640 patterns · 214 unauthored in this source."
The editor
Selecting a pattern opens four stacked cards on the right:
Friendly heading
An optional plain-language title and one-line "essence" shown in the report in place of the raw astrological term, which then appears small beneath it — e.g. a title of "Freedom in Love" over the small-print "Venus square Uranus." This alias is source-independent: it's keyed to the pattern itself, not to any one source's section text, and has its own Enabled switch and Save button.
Delineation
The section text for the selected pattern in the selected source, with its own Enabled switch and a version readout. Two text fields cover the two writing styles a report can draw on: Template text, which accepts slot tokens —
{apex}{leg1}{leg2}{members}{sign}{house}{mode}{element}— filled in per chart at export time, and Modernized text, plain Markdown formatted with the toolbar above it (H2 heading, bullet list, numbered list, bold, italic). A Report topic combo files the section under one of the chapter topics described above.Fragments
Only shown for Templated patterns. Modular clauses appended when their slot matches the detected instance, shared across every source rather than duplicated per source — each fragment names a slot (apex · mode · element · sign · house · outofsign), an optional role filler, its text and an Enabled checkbox. Add fragment appends a blank row.
Preview
Renders the composed Markdown so you can check formatting before saving. Refresh re-runs it against the current field contents.
Save changes, at the bottom of the editor, commits the Delineation and Fragments cards together; the Friendly heading card saves independently with its own button.
- 1Search & filters — key/label search, Family and Authored/Unauthored status.
- 2Corpus source — picks whose sections the list and editor reflect.
- 3Pattern list — filled/hollow markers show whether the selected source has a section for each pattern.
- 4Summary line — filtered count against the source's total unauthored count.
- 5Friendly heading — the optional alias title and essence, source-independent.
- 6Delineation — Template and Modernized text, with the markdown toolbar above.
New in v2.0.0: the Manage data bar
A new strip sits directly under the Workbench's title bar, labelled Manage data: and holding four buttons — Families, Sources, Patterns and Topics. Before v2.0.0 these catalogue rows could only be changed by editing the database directly; each button now opens a self-contained manager dialog with a list, a form and New / Save / Delete buttons, so the whole corpus structure — not just the delineation text sitting on top of it — is editable from inside the app. Closing any manager dialog (its close button reads Done) refreshes the worklist's filters and the editor's combos to match.
The Manage data bar, new in v2.0.0 — Families, Sources, Patterns and Topics, each opening its own manager dialog.
Deleting from any of these four dialogs asks for confirmation with a small popup anchored to the Delete button itself (not a second dialog window — WinUI only allows one at a time). The confirmation message is always specific about exactly what will be affected, and every one of the four ends with the same standing warning: content that also exists in AstroWatch's shipped snapshot reappears the next time the app launches unless it's also removed from the master database, not just your local copy.
Families
Manage families lists every family code, backed on first open by scanning existing patterns so any family that's only ever existed as a string on a pattern becomes a real, editable catalogue row. Each row shows its code, an optional friendly name, and how many patterns currently carry it.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Family code | Stored on patterns, e.g. inter_aspect. Editable — renaming a
family cascades the new code to every pattern that carried the old one. |
| Friendly name | Optional. |
Delete removes the family and every pattern filed under it, plus those patterns' own sections and every clause requirement or pointer that referenced them — the confirmation message states the exact pattern and section counts before you confirm.
Sources
Manage corpus sources lists every source with its code, title and section count, and an "· disabled" tag for any source with its Enabled switch off.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Code | Short, e.g. AWE. |
| Title | Required. |
| Author | Optional. |
| Enabled / Disabled | A disabled source is skipped by "All sources" exports and by Report Manager's blended view, without deleting anything. |
Delete removes the source and, through it, every section it holds — and everything those sections contain in turn. A source that's part of the content AstroWatch ships with is called out by name in the confirmation, since it's the clearest case of the standing shipped-snapshot warning above.
Patterns
Manage patterns is the one manager with its own filter box, since the pattern catalogue is by far the largest — the list caps at 500 rows and prompts you to narrow the filter beyond that.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Key | Unique, and immutable once created — it has to match exactly what a detector emits, so an existing pattern's key can't be edited, only its other fields. |
| Family | Chosen from the same family list the Families manager edits. |
| Display | The astrological label shown in the worklist and editor header. |
| Kind | Enumerated or Templated — Templated patterns are the ones that get a Fragments card in the editor. |
| Ring arity | How many chart rings the pattern involves; defaults to 1. |
Delete removes the pattern's own sections and strips any clause requirement or pointer elsewhere in the corpus that referenced it, so nothing is left pointing at a pattern that no longer exists — again with exact counts shown before you confirm.
Topics (chapters)
Manage topics lists every chapter topic by its ordinal (chapter order — lower sorts earlier), name, code, context (when set) and section count.
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Code | Unique, immutable once created. |
| Name | The chapter title as it appears in a composed report. |
| Ordinal | Chapter order; lower numbers come earlier in the book. |
| Context | Optional; leave at "(none / shared)" unless the topic is specific to one report context. |
Free vs. Pro
The Interpretation Workbench in its entirety — the worklist, the editor and the new Manage data bar — is a Pro feature. Both menu paths to it are gated the same way as any other Pro tool; on Free, clicking either one opens an upgrade prompt instead of the Workbench.
What's next
Once you've authored sections here, see how they surface in a finished report — chapter ordering, show/hide toggles and the Coverage gaps worklist that links straight back to this page: Report Manager →