What is a blank in OpenCues?

A blank is an underscore (_) you place in your text as a request: fill this in. OpenCues reads the surrounding context, infers what is being asked, and responds in place, without you leaving the input you are typing in.

Examples

• 4 * 12 = _ resolves to 48.
• capital of japan _ resolves to Tokyo.
• weather london _ shows the current conditions.
• translate to japanese _ rewrites the text before it.

Three ways a blank resolves

You never pick a mode; the surrounding text decides. Keyword-bound blanks handle known fast paths (volume _, nvda _) by calling a script or live data source with no LLM in the loop. Transform blanks fire when the _ is paired with an instruction (make this past tense _) and rewrite the text in place. The fluid blank covers everything else: a single fused LLM call segments the question out of your text and answers it.

Properties worth knowing

• Ownership lock. Once a _ resolves, no other suggestion can overwrite the result. Editing the word releases the lock.
• Visible failure. If nothing can resolve the blank, the _ simply stays. There is no silent gave-up state.
• Reversible. Navigate to the filled word with Ctrl+Alt+←/→, then Ctrl+Alt+↑/↓ cycles through other answers or right back to what you typed.
• Deterministic triggers. A keyword-bound blank fires when its keyword leads the sentence your _ ends, so prose that merely mentions the word does not trigger it.

Blanks are one half of the OpenCues model: they carry your request to the system. Cues are the other direction. The full lineage of the idea is in the Inline Prompting essay, and the file format is part of the open standard.

Related: Cues vs blanks · Transform blank vs fluid blank · OpenCues vs espanso · The underscore trick · GitHub repo