Date ranges and the top-bar picker

MentionFlow has one date control, in the top bar. There are no per-page pickers to keep in sync. You set the window once and every data page moves together.

The one picker

The control is a pill that reads your current window: "Last 7 days" for a preset, or the exact span "Jun 20 to Jul 3" for a custom range. Click it for the presets and a custom from and to range. Your choice lives in a cookie (mf-range) that every server-rendered page reads, so two screens can never disagree about which runs they counted.

A window is two things: a length (how many days) and an anchor (which day it ends on).

• Presets (Last 7, 14, 28, 90, or 180 days) are rolling. They anchor at your newest collected day, not the wall-clock "today". A gap in collection never quietly stretches the window past real data.
• Custom ranges pin both ends to the dates you pick, up to 200 days long. Every page then draws exactly those dates.

How the window is labelled

• A preset reads "the last 7 days" in page subtitles and tooltips. That rolling phrasing is honest, because the window really is rolling.
• A custom range reads its exact dates instead ("Jun 1 to Jun 15"), never "last N days" for a fixed span. The header also shows a date badge, so you can't miss that you are on a pinned window. Presets show no badge.

The phrasing comes from one shared helper, so a subtitle, a chart axis, and a CSV export always describe the window the same way.

Compare to previous period

Beside the date pill is a compare-to-previous toggle. Turn it on and trend charts draw a dashed overlay of the previous window of the same length. The toggle's glyph is that same solid-over-dashed line. It is indigo-tinted with a pressed state when active and a neutral outline when off, so you can always see how it is set.

• Compare defaults on (cookie mf-compare).
• It is a separate cookie from the range. Turning comparison off never changes your window, and changing your window never touches comparison.
• A chart with no prior data hides the overlay rather than inventing a flat baseline. That is the same data-honesty rule that fills missing days with null, never zero.

Prompt-change markers

A trend line can move for two reasons. The AI answers changed, or you changed what is being measured. Add ten prompts halfway through the window and your visibility can jump overnight, with nothing improved.

So any day in the chart window where you added prompts gets a marker: a dashed vertical rule with a small "+N" badge on the axis. Hover it and the tooltip names the prompts that landed that day (the first few, then "+N more"). Several adds on the same day collapse into one marker. The home trend chart carries these, so a step in the line sits next to its reason.

Only additions are marked, and that is on purpose. Adding a prompt is the one prompt-set change MentionFlow records with a date, so it is the only one it can mark honestly. Edits, pauses, resumes, and archives are not timestamped, so they draw no marker. An archived prompt keeps its original "added" marker, because that addition really happened and shaped the window it landed in. Markers show on live brands only. Demo data has no real creation dates to mark.

What the picker governs

The picker sets the window on every data page. The whole roster moves as one:

• Overview, Competitors, Sources, Prompts and Prompt trends, Answers, Fan-outs, Shopping, Crawlers, Pages, Content, and the printable client report.
• Detail pages follow their parent's window. An individual prompt, a single crawler agent, and a product detail page all use the same pick.

On Pages the roster is a lifetime snapshot, but its windowed columns ("Cited · Nd", "Answers", "Last cited") follow the picker. The snapshot columns stay labelled all-time, so the two are never confused.

Pages that deliberately ignore it

Not every screen carries windowed numbers, and MentionFlow won't let a control look live while doing nothing. On a page it does not govern, the picker dims, explains itself in a tooltip and inside its menu, and says it is not governing.

These pages ignore the range on purpose:

• Actions: the kanban board is durable state. Cards keep what you triaged instead of coming and going as you slide the date picker. The engine still refreshes its suggestions from the current window, but the board you built stays put.
• A single receipt: one answer has exactly one date, so an individual receipt isn't windowed.
• A single source domain: a domain's page adds up its whole fetched history rather than one window length, and says so.
• Settings, account, brand hub, site health, research, suggestions, the reports hub, portfolio, learn, refer, content detail, and knowledge pages carry no windowed numbers, so the picker sits dimmed there too.

Related

• Core concepts: how windows anchor, and the null-not-zero rule.
• Dashboard overview: the home screen the picker governs first.
• Data honesty: why an empty comparison hides instead of drawing a zero.
• Actions: the durable board that keeps its cards whatever the range.