When typing anywhere in a Coda doc, you can type “@” and then select from a list of all rows across all tables in the document. That’s excellent! But what if a row for the item you want to @-mention doesn’t exist yet? It would be marvelously useful to type “@” and type the name of the item-to-be, and the list (which knows the item doesn’t exist) offers “Create new row in…” and then it lists all the tables. Clicking (or down-arrowing and hitting Enter on) one of the tables adds your text as a new row and links it to that row.
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Hi David,
What works well for me, is to start out from the other side.
I have a single table, called dbThoughts. The table has thought types, say tasks, projects, meetings, ideas. When I create a new row, I select a thought type.
Everything else is just views with filters: tasks, projects, etc.
I have also started creating “complex” thought types, for example Functional Design Document. In this case, a new row would copy a FDD template into a canvas column, from where the doc can be completed.
It’s just a ramble,
Rambling Pete.
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I appreciate the reply, but I may have not been clear enough in my post. You know how when you type text inside a list/select column, and it shows options you can select but it also allows you to create a new option? I’d like to apply that same logic to @-mentioning, which also shows a list of items but doesn’t allow you to create a new one. You can only @-mention an existing item. I’d like to be able to create a new item (ie, row in a table) while @-mentioning. Does that make it clearer?
By the way, I have also used your single-table approach, and I also called them Thoughts. 
For me it was because I used TheBrain before discovering Coda.
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Interesting, I used TheBrain for quite a while. It looks like they have also gone very far with that tool. I really enjoyed the ability to have the graphical links. Maybe one day in Coda…
What I meant is that you stop using pages, and do everything in the table. Literally everything.
P
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I would love this in Coda. I’ve recently played around with an another app called Capacities and it has this. Essentially anywhere you’re writing, you can use the “+” key, which brings up a list of Tables, you pick one, and then it opens up the new row form. It’s basically a new row button without needing to create a new row button, and then you have a linked reference to that new item wherever it was you were typing.
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Also, I think it’s important to note… I believe the @ reference should remain as is and we should rather have a new shortcut to create items in a table, e.g. “+” or something akin to that. Using @ just makes it cumbersome as you then also have to specify whether you’re referencing or creating an item and referencing.
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Grammarly has something similar, but it allows you to go to different tools using previously set up configuration,
Will be interesting to see if and how that makes it way into Coda…
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