Fog of war

A visibility setting that hides distant nodes from the user's view to reduce cognitive load. The term is borrowed from strategy games.

Fog of war is a visibility setting in Tree that hides distant nodes from the user's view to reduce cognitive load. The term is borrowed from strategy games, where unexplored regions of the map are obscured until the player reaches them.

Default visibility

In Tree, fog of war controls how many tiers of locked work are visible. The default reveals the available tier (work that can be started now), the in-progress tier (work currently being done), and one tier of locked nodes (work that's coming next). Everything beyond that fades out of view.

Configuration

Fog of war is editable. Admins can configure it globally for the project, per-user, or per-group. Common configurations include:

  • All visible. Fog of war is off; the full graph is always shown.
  • One tier of lookahead. Only the next locked tier is visible; deeper work is hidden.
  • Per-role visibility. Different team members see different depths. Engineers see two tiers, executives see the full graph, contractors see only their assigned branch.

The setting can be changed at any time. Changes take effect immediately. The graph data is unaffected; only the visualization changes.

Why fog of war exists

Fog of war exists because large project graphs become unreadable when every node is rendered at once. A 200-node project tree with all nodes visible is technically complete but cognitively useless.

Fog of war restores readability by showing only what the user needs to think about, with the option to lift the fog when planning further ahead.

LAST UPDATED · 2026-05-11