PM Cross-Entity Links

What it is

Bidirectional linking between Mission Control board items and other entities in the app -- vault notes, mind maps, diagrams, whiteboards, flowcharts, URLs, writer documents, email threads, meetings, GitHub PRs, commits, branches, and issues (14 entity types).

Where to find it

The Mission Control item card shows a Links tab listing all linked entities grouped by type, and each linked tool shows backlink chips in its header. Users create links from a tool's toolbar via a search-and-select picker (PmItemPicker), and can unlink from either side.

How it behaves

A PM item can be linked to any of 14 entity types. GitHub entities navigate to GitHub URLs (validated https://github.com/ prefix) rather than activating an in-app project. GitHub commit links can be created automatically by the commit scanner when a commit message references an MC item (e.g. "MC-42"). GitHub PR links are discovered by a 5-minute polling scanner that parses item references from PR titles and bodies.

No dedicated settings. Requires missionControlEnabled.

For agents

Two write paths

1. Core surfaces call PM_ITEM_LINKS_CREATE / _DELETE directly via useLinkToItem and PmItemPicker.
2. Plugin surfaces (whiteboard, mindmap, flowchart) call the boardLinks bridge namespace, gated by the boards.link permission. The broker is narrower than the IPC path for security: entity type comes from the plugin ID (not the wire), target item must sit on a granted board, and a plugin can only unlink its own entity type. The reads are narrowed the same way: listing an entity's links drops any whose item sits on a board the plugin was not granted, so a granted board yields its links and an ungranted one yields nothing.

Both paths write the same pm_item_links rows and emit the same PM_ITEM_LINKS_CHANGED push. The 14 entity types are defined in LINK_ENTITY_TYPES.

IPC channels

Defined in src/shared/ipc-channels/pm.ts:

• PM_ITEM_LINKS_LIST -- list links for an item
• PM_ITEM_LINKS_CREATE -- create a link
• PM_ITEM_LINKS_DELETE -- soft-delete a link
• PM_ITEM_LINKS_FOR_ENTITY -- reverse lookup (links from entity side)
• PM_ITEM_LINKS_SEARCH_ITEMS -- search items for the picker

All are desktop-only (BLOCKED_CHANNELS).

• Contract: pm-cross-entity-link-contract.md.

Related

The items being linked are described in mission-control.md, the parent system for this area. Two neighbours worth knowing: pm-session-link.md connects a running session to an item rather than a document or a code artifact, and pm-search-integration.md makes those same items findable from global search. The tools on the other end of a link are covered by kms.md for vault notes, mindmap.md, whiteboard.md and flowchart.md for the plugin surfaces, and ai-writer.md for writer documents. Every page in this library is listed in INDEX.md.