How to use AI-assisted mind mapping

AI-assisted mind mapping helps with brainstorming by providing inspiration and ideas in seconds. You can ask a question, get up to five different answers and then go deeper into each answer just by clicking on a branch in your mind map. This guide will explain how it works.

If you’re new to mind mapping, check out our basic getting started guide first!

Getting started

The AI-assisted mind mapping feature is located on the contextual toolbar when working on Whimsical mind maps.

You can find this feature when you click on any node in a mind map. Once clicked, up to five suggestions will be generated.

When generating additional nodes, it will include the prior nodes in the prompt. This helps to control what kind of answers you’re looking for.

If you need more than five ideas, you can repeat the question!

Adding additional questions or prompts

You can add manual nodes (such as a prompt or question) that indicate to the AI what type of ideas you are looking for specifically. This helps to more reliably generate more of the same type of ideas. Here’s an example:

What happens to my data?

We use OpenAI for mind map generation. Only the text prompts in your mind map will be sent to and used by OpenAI for the feature to work. OpenAI does not preserve this data or use it for AI training.

Learn more about the safety of OpenAI here. You can also read Whimsical AI Terms of Service here. 

Usage limits

Our Starter and Education plans are limited to a total of 100 AI actions / editor. The quota is 2000 actions / month / editor for Pro plan customers and 4000 actions / month / editor for Org plan customers.