Scenario overview
Scenarios are Orgonaut's core planning feature.
A scenario is a safe modeling space where you can change structure, placements, and role design without affecting Live.
Why scenarios matter
Scenarios let you separate thinking from committing.
That means you can evaluate alternatives, compare outcomes, and make better decisions before changing your Live organisation.
Live vs scenario
| Context | Purpose | Typical action |
|---|---|---|
| Live | Current operating state | Run operations and reporting |
| Scenario | Proposed future state | Model changes and compare deltas |
Scenario lifecycle
- Create a scenario from Live (or another source where supported).
- Enter edit mode and model proposed changes.
- Review scenario deltas (cost, capacity, velocity).
- Share and discuss with stakeholders.
- Promote to Live when approved.
What you can model
Common scenario edits include:
- moving teams between departments
- changing actor placements and allocation
- adding or removing roles and positions
- adjusting team composition
These edits remain isolated until promotion.
Reading deltas
Scenario deltas help you quantify impact:
- monthly cost change
- headcount and FTE shifts
- velocity changes where data is available
- direct reporting-line changes
- added, removed, or changed organisation records
The delta page is intentionally filtered to changed records only and reads like a compact diff review.
When a scenario was cloned from another scenario, the default delta compares it with that immediate source scenario. Use the Live Baseline comparison option only when you specifically want to review the proposed state against Live Baseline; records inherited unchanged from the clone source stay hidden so the view still focuses on changes made in the current scenario.
The left side lists changed records grouped by model family. The main panel shows only the changed fields: green rows were added, red rows were removed, and blue headers mark changed records. Unchanged records stay hidden so larger restructures read like a focused review instead of a full org listing. Large scenarios show the first 25 changed records at a time: the summary counts always cover every change, and Show more at the bottom of the list loads the next 25.
Deltas can include people, agents, robots, teams, departments, positions, allocations, compensation, agent profiles, team agent budgets, and scenario metrics. Structural hierarchy changes are shown on their owning department or team record rather than as separate org-unit plumbing. Reporting changes appear as report-line diffs based on manager changes and direct-report impact.
Cost, budget, compensation, and velocity details follow your permissions. If those permissions are unavailable, the diff remains visible but sensitive cost or metric lines are omitted.
Use deltas to compare options, not just to confirm assumptions.
Compare on a date
Changes can carry dates: a placement can end on a leaver's last day, a new hire can start next year, and an AI deployment can have an effective-from date. Use Compare on date on the delta page to see both sides as they will be on a chosen date. Dates up to today use the figures recorded on or before that day. Later dates are projected from dated placements, pay records and approved AI deployments. Back to today returns to the current comparison. Archived scenarios keep the values recorded when they were archived.
Path over time
The scenario home page shows Path over time: headcount, FTE, monthly cost, and people versus agent cost for today and for 1 January of each following year, up to the year after the last dated change (at most five years ahead). Each figure shows its difference from the comparison source on the same date, so you can present the route from today to the end state, not just the destination. The card shows today's figures straight away and then fills in each future year in turn, so a large organisation may take a few seconds to show the whole path. If a year cannot be calculated, that row says so and the other years still load; reload the page to try again. If nothing in the scenario has a future start or end date, the card explains how to add one. The drift chart's See Path over time link jumps to this card.
Agents and scripts can read the same path in one call with GET /api/v1/scenarios/{scenario}/timeline (or orgonaut scenario timeline in the CLI, scenario.timeline over MCP, or by asking Astro), optionally for chosen dates with ?dates=2027-01-01,2028-01-01 (at most 12).
The Drift as edits were made chart is different: it plots the cumulative change as modeling events were recorded, not calendar dates.
Related scenario concepts
To put a planning scenario aside, choose Archive beside Manage Scenario in the yellow scenario banner, or use Archive in the Scenarios list. Confirm the prompt to archive it. The banner action takes you to the archived scenarios list. Archiving preserves the scenario's records and history, makes it read-only, and leaves Live unchanged. The action requires permission to update the scenario and is unavailable in archived, locked, or snapshot contexts.
Deleting a mutable planning scenario permanently removes its organisation records and allocations while leaving Live unchanged. Snapshots, applied scenarios, archived scenarios, and locked scenarios cannot be deleted through the planning scenario route.
- Snapshots: point-in-time captures for traceability
- Archived scenarios: read-only historical scenarios
- Lineage: how scenarios branch and relate
- Activity log: exact event-level change history
Smaller screens
On smaller screens, the secondary actions in the Scenarios and Snapshots list headers collapse to icon buttons to preserve width.
On a scenario's home page, Add, Compare, and Confirm and Apply to Baseline stay together on one line. At narrower widths the action row sits below the title and notes; on the smallest screens, the buttons use icons.
In the Scenarios list, the row-level Edit action switches to a filled pencil icon on small screens and returns to text-only on larger screens.
When to create a new scenario
Create a scenario when you need to answer one of these:
- What if we move this team under another department?
- What if we rebalance allocation across critical initiatives?
- What is the cost and capacity impact of adding agents?