Reference

Troubleshooting

Every entry below is a state the product can actually be in.

A page says a module is not in your coverage

Your Professional tools work across the modules included in your subscription. A page, record or saved item from another module says so instead of opening, and names the module; nothing about it is hidden or deleted. Your account page shows your coverage and is where you change it.

The sign-in link has not arrived

Check the spam folder first — a link that is delivered and filtered looks exactly like one that was never sent. Vigil answers every request the same way whether or not the address has an account, so the message on screen is not a statement about your address. If nothing arrives, request one more link and wait a few minutes; requesting many in a row is rate-limited and will slow you down rather than speed things up.

The link says it is invalid or expired

A sign-in link can be used once and expires fifteen minutes after it is issued. Following an older link from an earlier email, or following the same link twice, is refused by design. Request a new one.

An Economy & Logistics canvas shows only a few boxes, or an empty column

The canvas draws only what the records author. A node is a canonical record and an edge exists only where two records name each other by id, so a strategic system with no system record, a supply flow with no storage stage, or an organisation with no published facility draws exactly that — and the empty band says so in words. Choose another record in the selector, open the register beneath the canvas to see every node as a list, or switch instrument: the Infrastructure map shows every marker whether or not anything names it. Nothing is added to complete a picture.Read more in economy & logistics →

A commodity journey has no processing or storage stage

A commodity has no record of its own; its journey is built from the supply systems the module’s exposure objects name for it, and a stage holds only the markers those flows place there by their authored role and type. Where no flow names a refinery, a depot or a hub for that commodity, the stage is not drawn and the note beneath the canvas names it. That is a statement about the corpus, not about the commodity: nothing is invented to complete the journey.Read more in economy & logistics →

An edge cannot be expanded, or a node has nothing beneath it

An edge is a statement that two records name each other, and it has exactly one thing to show: why Vigil connects the two, with its basis and the sources that carry it — select it to read that. A node opens only what its record authors: a type group opens into its markers, a step into the records it names, a flow node into the other flows that share it. A node with nothing beneath it is a record that names nothing more, and the register beneath the canvas lists every node the canvas drew.Read more in economy & logistics →

Two pinned records say NOT COMPARABLE

The compare tray sets records side by side on the fields their own records carry. Where one record carries a field the other does not — a supply system has nodes and disruptions, a commodity has an exposure class and no review date, a chain has a basis in order — the cell says NOT COMPARABLE rather than blank, because a blank reads as a zero and a zero is a claim. Pin records of one kind for the fullest comparison; records of different kinds still compare on what they share.Read more in economy & logistics →

A flow is drawn as a sequence, not as a route on the map

A supply system record authors an order of nodes, not a geometry. The Flows canvas draws that order, and its arrows are marked schematic because the record does not say how the cargo moves between two nodes. The Map view shows the same nodes as points at their published coordinates and draws no line between them: a line would be a route Vigil has not established. Route geometry is a deferred decision, recorded in the deferred register.Read more in economy & logistics →

A module has few or no industrial organisations

An industry record is created only where the module’s own published prose carries a sourced claim about the organisation; a company named in passing stays prose until that bar is met. Caucasus has none and most modules have one or two, which the coverage register and its structural audit list as candidates for a create or a no-change decision. Industry on such a module says so and points to the register rather than drawing operators the records do not name.Read more in economy & logistics →

Why is a movement drawn as a schematic row, not a route?

Because the sources state where people moved from and to, not the way they travelled. A movement is two named areas in the source’s own words and the figure it rests on; the arrow between them is marked schematic, and no map draws a line, a corridor or a flow width for it. Drawing one would be a route Vigil has not established.Read more in humanitarian & resilience →

Why is a population figure so broad, or years old?

A humanitarian figure keeps the precision and the vintage of the release that produced it. Burkina Faso’s consolidated displacement count, for example, was last published in March 2023, and the workbench prints that date beside it rather than presenting it as current. Nothing narrows a regional estimate into a point, rounds an estimate into a count, or adds figures from different windows — Displacement’s Vintages view sets them on a date axis so the difference is visible.Read more in humanitarian & resilience →

Why is a stage missing, or why does an impact chain stop?

A chain has the steps the evidence supports and no more. Where the next consequence is not established, the ladder ends and says so; an edge is solid only where the step is confirmed, dashed where it is a plausible assessment, dotted where it is unconfirmed. A service lane shows only the dependences the module states, so a service that rests on nothing stated draws an empty first column.Read more in humanitarian & resilience →

Why does one module have so much less resilience data?

Coverage differs by module and is not smoothed. A civil-resilience module such as Taiwan, where no emergency is under way, documents stockpiles, redundancy, warning systems and exercises; an emergency module documents conditions, access and displacement, and may carry no structured measure at all. The coverage register lists what each module holds and what is missing, and none of it is a ranking of preparedness.Read more in humanitarian & resilience →

Why isn’t a facility or a power system duplicated inside Humanitarian & Resilience?

Because each record has one home. A crossing is a location, an energy or transport system is an Economy & Logistics record, ground is a terrain record; a humanitarian object names them by id and the workbench reads them from there. Open the system in Economy & Logistics from the inspector — the handoff appears wherever a civilian service names one.Read more in humanitarian & resilience →

Why does a formation have no position on the Forces & Operations map?

Because the Force Atlas records a published seat and nothing else: the garrison or headquarters address the institution itself publishes, drawn as a square. A formation whose institution publishes no seat has no square, and nothing is inferred from a deployment report, an event or a news item — a deployment report is not permanent basing, and a marker that is not a published seat is a generalised military site drawn hollow. The map shows points at the precision the records carry and never a disposition; the inspector says which kind a marker is.Read more in forces & operations →

Why does a formation show no equipment, or a system with no rung?

A formation fields only what its own record claims. The Fields band draws the documented claims first, with their evidence grade and, where the edge states one, their fielding rung; reported, prospective and historical claims are folded beneath them under their own heading rather than mixed in. A formation whose record carries no claim draws an empty band that says so — the catalogue is not searched to fill it — and an edge that states no rung shows no rung, because announced, ordered, delivered and fielded are four different facts and the record did not say which. The structural audit lists formations with no documented system as candidates.Read more in forces & operations →

Why is Doctrine empty for a module?

Because no force in that module carries a doctrine block. Doctrine is structured on a minority of organisations — the ones whose records state a method, adaptations and exceptions from published sources — and the registers board shows exactly the forces that have one; a module with none says so in words and shows any declared plan or assessed contingency its campaign records carry, which is the institutional-concept register. Nothing is inferred from a force’s equipment or structure to stand in for a method it has not stated.Read more in forces & operations →

Why does a campaign have no phases, or no map?

A campaign record authors its phases, and the Phases view draws exactly those in the record’s own order — a campaign with none is read whole, with its participants, geography, logistics and objectives beside it. A declared plan or an assessed contingency has no phases, no status and no outcome by construction, because it has not happened. The map shows only the published markers of the events inside each phase, stepped by phase: a phase whose events name no marker draws nothing, and no line, arrow or axis is drawn between phases because a phase order is a sequence, not a manoeuvre.Read more in forces & operations →

Why is a sustainment lane empty?

Because neither the force nor any command above it authors a sustainment edge. The edge lives on the force record and points at an Economy & Logistics record by id; where none exists the lane draws its bands empty and says so, and the Systems view lists every military-sustainment record in the module with the forces that depend on it, so a record with no dependent force is visible as a coverage statement rather than hidden. Nothing is inferred from a force’s equipment, seat or campaign to invent a dependency, and the structural audit lists the candidates.Read more in forces & operations →

I am signed in but the workspace is empty

Saved work belongs to the account it was made in. If you have more than one address, check that you signed in with the one you were working under. If the account is right and the desk is still empty, your Professional access may have ended — an account without an active subscription keeps its saved rows but cannot reach the surfaces that read them.Read more in your desk →

My subscription ended and I want my work

Cancelling ends the renewal; access continues to the end of the period already paid for. When it ends the workspace stops being reachable, and the saved rows are still there if access resumes. Deleting the account is what removes them, and deleting is deliberately refused while access is still running.Read more in your desk →

A saved item says “no longer published”

The canonical record it points at has been retired or superseded. This is the system working: your saved work holds a reference rather than a copy, so it tells you the ground moved instead of showing you something that has stopped being true. Open the item to see what it pointed at, and follow the successor if the record names one.Read more in method in use →

A brief shows unresolved blocks

The document panel counts them. An unresolved block is one whose record is no longer published; it prints a line saying so rather than vanishing, so a reader of the export can see that something was there. Remove the block, or replace it with the successor record.Read more in brief builder →

A module has no Tempo

Activity Tempo is maintained only where Vigil has an inclusion rule it would defend. Where a module has none, the Tempo rail is absent rather than empty. It is not a fault and it is never evidence about how much is happening in that theatre.Read more in monitor →

Compare says NOT COMPARABLE

The two records do not both carry that dimension. It is a result, not a failure: filling the cell in would produce a blank a reader would read as a zero. The row states the reason.Read more in analyse →

A scenario implication is greyed out

It is an authored rule whose conditions your current assumptions do not meet, shown rather than hidden so that you can see what the template holds and what it would take to reach it. Change an assumption and it becomes active.Read more in analyse →

I followed something and nothing has arrived

A follow delivers reviewed change. If the questions you follow were reviewed and held, there is nothing to send, and Vigil does not send a message to say a quiet week was quiet. The desk shows the reviews that happened either way.Read more in your desk →

An export did not download

Exports are generated in the browser and handed to it as a file. A pop-up or download blocker will stop that silently. Print and PDF open the browser’s own print dialogue, which some browsers restrict in private windows.Read more in brief builder →

Something looks wrong in a record

Write to Vigil. Corrections are made in place, dated and logged publicly, whether the error appeared in a free brief or in paid material — and a correction propagates into the collections, timelines and briefs that reference the record.Read more in method in use →

Anything not here, or anything that looks wrong in a record, goes to [email protected]. Corrections are made in place, dated and logged in the public corrections log.

Glossary

40 terms. Where the obvious misreading is the dangerous one, the entry says what the term is not.

Coverage (subscription)

The research modules a Professional subscription includes. Every plan carries the full Professional toolset; coverage decides which modules the tools work over. Chosen as one, two or three modules, a curated pack, or Complete.Quick start →

Curated pack

A fixed set of two or three modules that are read together, priced below the same modules chosen individually. A custom selection that exactly matches a pack is sold as the pack.Quick start →

Complete

Coverage of every published Vigil module, including modules published later, with no billing change when one is added.Quick start →

Baseline

A question was opened and its condition recorded. Nothing has been reviewed against it yet, so there is nothing for it to have changed from.Monitor →

Basis of an edge

Why a workbench canvas joins two records, stated by the stroke. Documented: a published source or the record’s own authored field names the relationship. Assessed: Vigil’s reading of the records, which no source states directly. Derived join: two authored ids that match, drawn dotted so it is never read as a statement either record makes. Authored sequence: a supply system’s own order of nodes, which is an order and not a route.Economy & Logistics →

Instrument

One of the six ways the Economy & Logistics workbench draws its model — Systems, Flows, Infrastructure, Industry, Commodities, Impact. They share a shell, a module, a selection, the pins and the dated-change axis; only the canvas changes. Switching instruments never loses the work in hand.Economy & Logistics →

Pin

A record held in the workbench’s compare tray, up to six of any kind. Pins travel in the address, so a set of pinned records can be sent to a colleague. The tray sets them side by side on the fields their own records carry and says NOT COMPARABLE where one record lacks a field; nothing is scored.Economy & Logistics →

Stage of a flow

The column a supply system’s node is placed in on the Flows canvas — origin, processing, storage, transport or distribution — derived from the node’s authored role and then from the marker’s type. A stage with no node is drawn empty and says so; no record is invented to fill it.Economy & Logistics →

Access state

Whether passage is open, restricted or closed at a crossing, corridor, port or transport hub, as that location’s own record states it, with its date. Unknown is a state a source supports; a point with no state is “not recorded”, which is not closed. Distinct from the record’s status, which says only whether the record is current.Humanitarian & Resilience →

Condition (civilian)

A humanitarian object’s own dated statement of where its system stands now, in up to a line, written in one of three display registers — running, flagged or stated. It is never a severity, and an object with no condition says so.Humanitarian & Resilience →

Measure rung

Where a resilience measure stands on the ladder its sources support: announced, in progress, in place, tested or used, lapsed. Rungs are never merged; a measure moves only on a newer sourced claim, and “tested” records what was exercised or done, not that it works.Humanitarian & Resilience →

Movement

A displacement or return recorded as two named areas in the source’s own words and the figure it rests on, with that figure’s vintage. It has no route, no coordinate and no line, and two figures from different windows are never added.Humanitarian & Resilience →

Fielding rung

Where a formation’s equipment claim stands on the ladder its sources support — announced, ordered, delivered, fielded, observed in use, withdrawn or transferred — stated on the edge beside its evidence grade. The rungs are never merged: announced is not ordered, ordered is not delivered, delivered is not fielded. An edge that states no rung shows none, and no edge carries a quantity or an allocation.Forces & Operations →

Posture (force)

An arrangement in the institution’s own words — what a force is structurally oriented towards, as of a date — with its basis: stated where the institution says it, assessed where Vigil reads it, in which case the record must state its exceptions. A posture is never a place, a position, a strength or a readiness, and it does not move a marker on any map.Forces & Operations →

Doctrine register

One of the four kinds of claim a doctrine block keeps apart: published doctrine (a document the force issued, cited by title, issuer and date), stated and observed method (what the force says it does and is seen to do, dated), assessed adaptation (what Vigil reads from repeated evidence, each dated and graded), and where the generalisation breaks down. A declared plan or an assessed contingency is a campaign record in a non-observed frame, shown beside them. What a force publishes is never read as what it does.Forces & Operations →

Sustainment dependency

An edge a force record authors onto an Economy & Logistics record — a logistics record or a strategic system — with its nature, its basis (documented or assessed), its confidence, its sources and its date. The record it points at stays owned by Economy & Logistics and is opened there; the system-facing view is computed, never authored twice. An edge a formation inherits from a command above it is marked via that command. A dependency is never a route, a capacity or a stock.Forces & Operations →

Published seat

The garrison or headquarters address a formation’s record carries because the institution publishes it — the only place the Force Atlas records for a formation (owner decision D2). It is drawn as a square on the Geography map, and it is not a deployment: a deployment report is not permanent basing, and no marker on any canvas is a disposition.Forces & Operations →

Basis of a line (Network)

In Network, the answer to “what does this line mean, and which record states it?”: the kind of line, the words of the field it is read from, its direction, the grade or role the record gives it, its dates by kind, the record and field it is written in, its own sources where it cites any, and what it does not establish. Every line has one; a line without one is not drawn.Network →

Documented path

In Network, a chain of authored references joining two records, found under stated rules — which kinds of line it may use, at most how many steps, shortest first. A path is not a causal chain, the shortest is not the most important, and “no path within the limit” is not a finding that two records are unconnected.Network →

Kind of line

In Network, what a line is: a standing relationship, structure, a typed association, a recorded dependency, a dated record, monitoring, a reference, or evidence. The kinds are never merged into “connected”, each is drawn in its own pattern, and each says what it does not establish.Network →

Saved investigation

A Network investigation kept in your workspace: the modules, the centre record, the records on the canvas and the expansions that put them there, the filters, a traced path, a selection and your annotations. It stores identifiers, never copies, and reopens against the records as they now stand.Network →

View connections

The public, free connection view in Explore: a record’s inspector opens the records it names and that name it, in one module, a step at a time, with the basis of every line. Network is the Professional workbench over the same lines across every covered module.Network →

Canonical record

A published Vigil record with an id, a date and a page of its own — an event, a development, an actor, a location, a Watch question, an observable, a source. Every Professional surface composes these; none of them authors prose about them.How it works →

Collection

A named set of canonical records you assembled. It holds references, not copies, so its contents stay current when a record is reviewed.Your desk →

Conditional implication

What an authored rule says follows inside the recorded Vigil system if the assumptions you set held. It cites the records it rests on and states its own unknowns. It is not a prediction and carries no likelihood.Analyse →

Covered zero

A period an activity series was counting in, during which it recorded nothing. Drawn differently from a period the series does not cover, because “we counted none” and “we were not counting” are different statements.Monitor →

Evidence entry

A dated line beneath an observable naming the canonical development, event, Note or brief it rests on, and which way it bears. Directions never sum.Investigate →

Follow

A marker you put on a question, an observable, a series or a standing scope. It changes what is shown to you and what reaches you. It never changes how anything is reviewed or graded.Your desk →

Lens

A sector vocabulary — energy, maritime, political and the rest — that records declare. Reading through one shows what every module holds on that theme. A lens is not a separate database.Investigate →

Met

One of a question’s named observables occurred. It describes evidence, not success, and not the answer to the question.Monitor →

No coverage

An activity series does not measure in this period or at this marker. It is never evidence that nothing happened.Monitor →

No material change

A standing file was reviewed and nothing moved. A finding with a date and an author, not an absence of work.Monitor →

Observable

A record beneath a Watch question stating what is being checked, where the reading stands and in which register, what would constitute movement, and what the reading cannot establish.Investigate →

Provenance mark

The boxed label at the top of every surface, saying where what it shows comes from: PUBLIC RECORD (the free corpus), PROFESSIONAL RECORD (maintained on the same cycle for subscribers), DERIVED FROM RECORDS (assembled from published records, with nothing authored on the surface itself) or SAVED WORK (yours, private to your account).How it works →

Reading

What an observable says today, on a stated date, in a stated register. It is the sentence a subscriber is being asked to rely on, and it always carries its own limits.Investigate →

Register

The standing of a statement, printed beside it: fact, assessment, user assumption, derived conditional implication, unknown, no coverage, no material change, or saved work.Method in use →

Scenario template

An authored set of conditions and rules over canonical records. You set the conditions; the template reports which parts of the record become relevant, affected or stressed, and publishes what it does not model.Analyse →

Standing Watch scope

A named exposure held across several canonical Watch questions at once, narrower than a module and wider than one question. It adds a selection and a stated relevance; it runs no second research process and produces no risk score.Monitor →

Tempo

Counts of dated, reported occurrences at published markers, under an inclusion rule the series states in full. Never severity, effect, risk, probability, threat or escalation.Monitor →

Watch question

A standing analytical question whose answer could materially change an assessment, with its current condition, the observable evidence that would move it, and a dated ledger of every review.Monitor →

Terms used across the whole of Vigil — confidence grades, evidence states, the date vocabulary, the map rules — are defined in the public glossary and the methodology.

Where the rest is written down

What Vigil Professional is

The product, what it costs, what it refuses to do, and the boundary between it and the free site.

Vigil methodology

What a claim, record, grade, date, map or Watch question means, and what Vigil deliberately does not publish.

Professional terms

What a subscription is, how it is billed and cancelled, and what it does not buy — including any influence over Vigil's analysis.

Privacy notice

Every piece of personal data an account involves, field by field.