Tagging Breakdown Items from the Script

What it does

On a scene’s Script tab, selecting text shows two actions: Add comment and Tag as…. Tagging opens a small popover where you pick a breakdown category, confirm the item name, and add it in one step. The result is identical to adding the item by hand on the Breakdown tab — the two views always agree.

• The item is created (or reused) and linked to this scene.
• Every scene item is highlighted automatically wherever its name appears in the script — you don’t have to hand-tag each mention.
• Each highlight is colored by its category, so props, wardrobe, cast, and the rest read apart at a glance.
• The matching chip on the Breakdown tab shows a small script glyph you can click to jump back.

Automatic, color-coded highlights

Highlighting is derived from the scene’s breakdown: for every item linked to the scene, each whole-word occurrence of its name in the script is highlighted. Add a prop on the Breakdown tab and it lights up in the script immediately; tag a passage and, because tagging links the item to the scene, all of its other mentions light up too. The Breakdown in scene list on the right groups items by category with a color swatch and an occurrence count, and clicking one flashes all of its mentions.

The first pass of this tagging happens automatically during Step 3 of the Breakdown Review, which uses these same colors to pre-highlight the AI’s proposals per scene. Step 3 also opens the same tagging popover you see here — category, name with existing-item suggestions, notes, and the location link — when you select text to add a missed item, so the two surfaces behave identically. This Script tab is where you refine and add to those tags afterward.

Categories and where they live

Every breakdown category is taggable. Behind the scenes they route to one of two systems, exactly as they do on the Breakdown tab:

• Art department — Props, Set Dressing, Wardrobe, Vehicles become records in the Props system, with sourcing, budget, and status tracking.
• Breakdown elements — Cast, Stunts, Extras, Special Effects, Makeup / Hair, Sound / Music, Special Equipment, and Animals become breakdown elements shared across scenes.

No duplicates

Items are matched by name within their category, case- and whitespace-insensitively. Tagging “Gun” in ten scenes creates one prop linked to ten scenes — not ten props. The popover also suggests existing items as you type so you can link to what already exists instead of creating a near-duplicate. Because raw script text is rarely the exact name you want, the name field is pre-filled from your selection but fully editable before you confirm.

Highlights survive new drafts

Because highlights are recomputed from item names against the current script text, they follow the words automatically when a new draft rewrites the scene — a renamed or moved passage re-highlights on its own with no bookkeeping. If you tagged an exact span that differed from the item name and that span can no longer be placed after a rewrite, it lands in one of three states:

• ok — the span is unchanged; it tracks exactly.
• shifted — the span moved; it follows, disambiguated by the stored context around it.
• orphaned — the span can no longer be placed. It moves to the Unanchored tags list with its quoted text; the linked item stays on the scene (and is still highlighted wherever its name appears).

From the Unanchored tags list you can Re-attach a span by selecting the text where it now belongs, or remove just that span. Nothing is ever silently dropped.

Removing an item — everywhere at once

Removal is unified: there is a single action, and it keeps every surface in sync. Click a highlight (or its entry in the Breakdown in scene list) to open its actions:

• Open — jump to the prop’s detail page (art items).
• Remove from scene — unlinks the item from this scene and clears its highlight everywhere in the scene. The item remains available for other scenes.

It works the same from any direction. Unlinking an item on the Breakdown tab clears its script highlight, and deleting a prop outright from the Props page removes it from every scene, the breakdown, and the script — there are no stale highlights left pointing at an item that is no longer in the scene.

Comments and tags coexist

A passage can be both commented on and tagged. Comments render in amber; tags render in their category color with a dotted underline. When the same words carry both, you’ll see the amber fill and the category underline together.

Permissions