Report Writer overview

Report Writer is the place inside NearbySpy where the work becomes a deliverable. It is a focused document editor for the kind of writing PIs actually produce — case summaries, surveillance logs, interview reports, deposition prep memos — built so the document, the Case, and the Evidence stay connected without forcing you into a separate word processor.

Where Report Writer lives

Open any Case from your dashboard and find the Reports section. From there you can create a new Report, open an existing one, or duplicate a previous Report as a template for the next one. Each Report is owned by a single Case and inherits that Case's permissions. Members of the Case who have the Investigator, Admin, or Owner role can write Reports; Viewers can read; Clients see only Reports that have been explicitly shared.

The editor

The editor supports the writing primitives you would expect: paragraphs, headings, ordered and unordered lists, blockquotes, bold and italic, inline links, code, and horizontal rules. It is rich text without being heavy — there is no formatting menu the size of an airliner cockpit. The goal is to keep you writing, not configuring.

Reports are saved to the Case automatically as you write. There is no manual save step under normal use, and there is no risk of losing a draft because you forgot to click a button. Version state is reflected in the header so you always know whether your latest changes are stored.

How Reports relate to Cases

A Report is a document about a Case, not a substitute for it. The structured data — Operations, Evidence, Subjects, members — continues to live in the Case. The Report is the narrative that sits on top of that data. Many investigators build Reports as a final pass: assemble the timeline from the global Cases calendar and Kanban, pull supporting files from the Evidence Locker, and write the synthesis in Report Writer.

How Reports relate to Notes

Notes (see Using Case Notes) are where you are allowed to be messy. Reports are where you are not. A common workflow is to draft thinking in Notes during the Case, then promote that thinking into a Report at the end. Reports remain editable until you decide they are final — there is no formal lock — but the audit trail records substantive changes.

Sharing with Clients

Reports are not visible to Clients by default. When a Report is ready for the Client, you can share it explicitly. Shared Reports appear in the Client's Case view alongside any Evidence and Operations you have made visible. The Client cannot edit a Report — they can read it and, depending on the Case's settings, leave a comment or acknowledge receipt.

If you also need a signed copy of a Report, prepare and send it through DocuVault rather than asking the Client to print, sign, and rescan. See Preparing PDFs and sending for signature.

AI assistance

Report Writer ships with optional AI assistance — slash commands, inline copilot suggestions, and classifier-driven cleanup. None of it writes a Report for you, and none of it is used unless you ask. The model never trains on your Case data, and the assistance is scoped to the document you are working in. The full AI behavior, including which models are used and how to turn pieces off, is documented in AI assistance inside Report Writer.

Best practices

• Start every Report with a one-paragraph summary that would stand alone if a partner only read the first 200 words.
• Anchor claims to Evidence. If a sentence depends on a file, link or reference the Evidence card so the chain of custody is obvious.
• Use headings aggressively. A long Report with no structure is harder to defend than the same Report broken into sections.
• Treat the final Report as the artifact you would be comfortable handing to opposing counsel. That mindset makes most stylistic decisions for you.