Keep the important parts of AI conversations with Takeaways

What AI conversation Takeaways are

The useful part of a conversation is rarely the whole of it. Twenty messages of back and forth can come down to one choice, one number and one thing to do on Monday, and a week later those are buried somewhere in the middle of the transcript. A Takeaway is a short card for one such point: a category, a title, and the passage it came from, quoted word for word.

Every card carries one of six categories. Takeaways you save yourself are always References; the other five come from the optional automatic suggestions.

Not a memory for the model

Takeaways are for you to read. They are not added to the requests your conversation sends, carried into other conversations, or used to teach or train anything. The model answering you does not know they exist. If you switch on Automatic Takeaways, its separate check receives the cards already kept so it does not suggest them again.

How to use Takeaways, step by step

1. Keep conversation history onTakeaways are saved with conversations, so they need history, which is on by default under Settings › History.
2. Save a response as a takeawayUnder a finished answer you want to keep, choose Save as takeaway, next to Copy and Save as PDF. The card is made at once, on your PC.
3. Widen the window to see the railCards appear in a rail on the right once the window is at least 1,560 logical pixels wide. Maximize it, or drag it wider.
4. Add a noteAdd a note on a card opens a small box for your own words. Ctrl+Enter saves it, Esc cancels.
5. Jump back when you need itJump to source scrolls the conversation to the message the card came from. Dismiss removes a card you no longer need.
6. Switch on Automatic Takeaways, if you want suggestionsThe Auto switch at the top of the rail, or Settings › Takeaways. It is off by default, and it makes a separate request to an AI provider after each response.

Takeaways arrived in SideNote Pro 1.15. The version you have is shown in Settings › About.

Save a Takeaway yourself

When the assistant says something you know you will want again, save it instead of trying to remember where it was. Save as takeaway sits among the quiet actions under each finished response, after Copy and Save as PDF, and keeps that answer as a card straight away.

Made on your PC

The card's title comes from the response's opening heading or first sentence, and its quotation is copied exactly from the response's first lines. No AI provider is asked, so nothing is sent, no tokens are used and nothing is added to your usage figures.

Filed as a Reference

A card you save yourself always carries that category, because deciding what kind of point it is would take a model.

One card per response

Once a response has a card, its action changes to Saved to Takeaways, and choosing it again adds nothing. Dismiss that card and the response offers Save as takeaway again.

Works either way

Saving by hand works whether Automatic Takeaways is on or off, and does not depend on the provider or model selected in the message box.

The action is offered under answers that have finished and been saved. A stopped answer does not offer it, because Continue would replace the text a card quotes. It is there in a compact window too; the card is kept, and shows in the rail once the window is wide enough.

Let SideNote Pro suggest Takeaways automatically

Automatic Takeaways is an optional setting, and it is off until you switch it on. There are two switches for it, the Auto switch at the top of the Takeaways rail and the one in Settings › Takeaways, and they are the same setting. The rail's switch takes effect at once.

With it on, each time a response you asked for finishes and is saved, SideNote Pro sends one separate request to an AI provider asking whether that exchange settled anything worth keeping: a decision, a next step, a conclusion, a useful reference or command, or a question still open. It runs in the background, with no spinner or dialog, and whatever the outcome, your conversation, its Retry and the message box are left alone.

Most responses produce nothing

The default instructions tell the model to return nothing unless a point is genuinely likely to be useful later, and one response gives at most two cards.

Every quotation is checked

A suggested card is kept only when the passage it quotes appears word for word in the message it names. A model can still choose a point you would not have chosen, but it cannot put words into the conversation.

Only new responses are checked

Switching it on does not go back through the conversations you already have.

Long exchanges are skipped

A question and answer larger than about 6,000 estimated tokens between them is not checked at all, rather than being sent as an expensive background request.

Switching it off keeps everything

It stops new suggestions and cancels any check still running. Every card and note stays where it is, and you can still save by hand.

Settings › Takeaways

Choose the provider and what is worth keeping

Two further settings shape the automatic checks. Neither affects Takeaways you save by hand.

Provider for takeaways

Same as conversation, the default, sends each check to the provider profile and model that wrote the response being checked, so nothing goes to a provider the conversation has not already used. You can instead choose one profile for all takeaway requests: a smaller, cheaper model, for example, or a local one in Ollama, which keeps the check on your own machine. A profile chosen here receives the checks of every conversation, including ones you keep on a local model, so leave it on Same as conversation if that separation matters. The profile selected in the message box never changes where a check goes, and if the profile that wrote a response has since been deleted, nothing is sent for it.

Settings › Takeaways

If checks keep failing, because a key was rejected or a model no longer exists, one line in the rail reads Takeaways could not use the selected AI provider, with a link to these settings. It never interrupts the conversation.

Takeaway instructions

The instructions decide what the check treats as worth keeping. The default asks for explicit decisions, concrete next steps, settled conclusions, specific facts or configuration details, reusable commands and questions that remain open, and leaves out greetings, generic advice, options that were not chosen, every item of a list and summaries of long answers. Customize… lets you replace it with your own, up to 2,000 characters, such as Only keep commands, configuration values and technical decisions; Reset to default brings the default back.

Settings › Takeaways

Add a private note

Each card can carry a note in your own words: what the point means for your work, what to do about it, who needs to know. Add a note opens a small box inside the card, with Save and Cancel; Ctrl+Enter saves and Esc cancels. Once a card has a note the action reads Edit note, and saving an empty note removes it.

Stored on your PC

A note is saved with its conversation, up to 2,000 characters, and protected with it when history protection is on.

Never sent to an AI provider

Not with your next message, not in an automatic check, and not anywhere else. Writing or editing a note makes no request at all.

Kept apart from the quotation

The note sits under the quoted passage with its own small label, so what the conversation said and what you made of it do not blur together.

An automatic check can help find the point. The note about it is only ever yours.

Jump back to the source

Takeaways are not detached sticky notes. Every card quotes the exact passage it came from and knows which message that was, so it always leads back into the conversation.

The Takeaways rail

Jump to source

Scrolls the conversation to the message the card came from and outlines it for a moment. It finds the message; the quotation on the card is the passage within it.

Dismiss

Removes the card permanently. The conversation, its title and its place in history are untouched.

Replaced answers

When Regenerate or Edit and resend replaces an answer, the cards quoting it go once the new answer is saved. A card never points at text that is no longer in the conversation.

Takeaways beside the conversation

In a wide window, SideNote Pro divides the width into three columns: history on the left, the conversation in its reading column in the middle, and Takeaways on the right. The points worth keeping stay in view while you read and write, without taking anything away from the transcript.

The wide layout with Takeaways

The rail appears once the window is at least 1,560 logical pixels wide, which is 1,560 screen pixels at 100 percent display scaling, whenever conversation history is on, whether or not Automatic Takeaways is. Below that width the window keeps the wide layout with history only, or the compact one beside your work, and your cards wait until there is room again. Cards scroll on their own, so a long list never moves the transcript.

Display scaling affects whether the rail fits on your screen. A maximized window on a 1920 × 1080 display at 100 percent scaling shows the rail; the same display at 125 percent gives a window 1,536 logical pixels wide, just short of it. You can still save Takeaways there, and they appear on a wider display or at a smaller scaling.

Where Takeaways are stored

Takeaways belong to their conversation and are saved with it, in the local conversation archive under %LOCALAPPDATA%\SideNote Pro\. There is no separate Takeaways store, no copy on a SideNote Pro server and no sync between devices.

History must be on

With conversation history off there is nowhere to keep a card, so the rail, Save as takeaway and notes are unavailable, and nothing is sent for Takeaways. Turning history off deletes nothing: your cards come back when you turn it on again.

Deleted with the thread

Deleting a conversation deletes its Takeaways and their notes. So does a retention period that removes an inactive thread, and so does Delete all conversation history. Pin the conversations whose Takeaways you want to keep.

Protected with the archive

With history protection on, Takeaways and notes are encrypted with Windows DPAPI for your account, together with the rest of the archive.

Not part of an export

A conversation's Markdown export contains its messages; its Takeaways and notes are not included.

Managing AI conversations covers retention, protection and backing up the archive the cards live in.

Manual and automatic Takeaways compared

Once kept, the two are the same kind of card, in the same rail, with the same note, jump and dismiss. Nothing on a card records which way it arrived.

Privacy and provider usage

Takeaways are local, with one optional exception: with Automatic Takeaways on, part of the conversation goes to an AI provider for each check.

Saving by hand

Sends nothing: no request, no tokens, nothing counted.

Notes

Never sent to any AI provider, in any request.

While switched off

Nothing is sent for Takeaways while Automatic Takeaways or conversation history is off.

Automatic checks

Each is a separate request. It carries the finished exchange and up to six earlier messages from the same conversation, as text, with your takeaway instructions and the category, title and quotation of the most recent cards already kept, so the model does not suggest them again.

Never sent

Images, documents, text captured from other apps and folder excerpts are never sent for Takeaways, and a card never quotes them.

Where it goes

To the provider you chose: the one that wrote the response, or the profile you picked for Takeaways, and nowhere else. BediniLabs never receives it.

Usage and cost

A check is counted like any other request. Its tokens appear under Usage & cost, and the optional daily cost limit applies to it. A check your provider refuses outright, such as one with a rejected API key, is counted with no tokens.

Settings › Takeaways

What a provider does with a request is governed by its own terms, as it is for everything else SideNote Pro sends. How SideNote Pro handles your data covers the rest of the application.

When Takeaways are useful

A decision from research

After weighing three approaches, the one you chose stays at the side while the conversation moves on to how to carry it out.

The next step from troubleshooting

A long diagnosis ends in one thing to try next. Keep it in view while you go and try it.

A command or procedure

Save the answer that held the exact command, and jump back to it next time instead of searching for it.

A conclusion from a document

After working through an attached report, keep the conclusion the conversation reached, with a note on what it means for your own work.

A question still open

Automatic Takeaways can keep an unresolved question visible, so it is not lost under the answers that came after it.

A reference with your own context

A value, an identifier, a setting: save it, and note where it applies.

Takeaways keep points you will need after a conversation moves on. For an answer that has to leave the application, such as one for a ticket or email, use PDF export. Organising your conversations covers keeping the archive itself findable.