SideNote ProOrganize your AI conversations
A conversation archive is only valuable if you can find things in it. A few small habits are the difference between a searchable record of your thinking and a thousand threads called *hi*.
One thread, one topic
The single most useful habit, and it pays twice. A focused thread is easier to find later, and it is cheaper and faster now, because every turn re-sends the accumulated context of everything else in it.
Ctrl+N starts a new conversation. Use it whenever the subject genuinely changes. The temptation is to keep one long thread going because it is already open; resist it, because that thread becomes both expensive and unfindable.
Titles are generated from your first message
Thread titles come from your first message or attachment name, shortened to about 52 characters. That makes the opening sentence do double duty: it is your question and it is the label you will scan for in three weeks.
*Why is the nightly export timing out after the migration?* makes a findable thread. *hey quick question* does not. And when a conversation turns out to be about something other than where it started, rename it from the history flyout. Ten seconds then saves a search later.
Pin sparingly
Pinned threads sit at the top of history and are exempt from retention pruning. Both properties are only useful if pins stay rare.
- A reference thread you return to weekly.
- An ongoing investigation still in progress.
- A conversation whose conclusion you have not acted on yet.
Unpin when the thing is done. A pinned list of forty is just a second unsorted list, and it quietly defeats retention.
Search is full-text
Search covers titles and message content, so you can find a thread by something said in the middle of it, not only by its title. Groups for Pinned, Today, Yesterday, Previous 7 days and Older narrow it further.
Search for distinctive terms: an error string, a filename, a product name, a specific number. Common words match everywhere and tell you nothing.
Set a retention period
Retention deletes inactive threads after a number of days you choose, with 0 meaning keep everything. Pinned threads are never pruned.
Something like 90 days works well for most people. It clears the great mass of one-off questions while leaving anything recent or deliberately pinned. Keeping everything forever sounds prudent and mostly produces noise that makes search worse.
If a thread matters beyond retention, act on it rather than trusting you will remember to pin it: pin it, or export it. Retention is silent by design.
Know which export you want
Markdown, whole thread
From the history flyout. The full conversation as text, for filing in your notes or a repository. Document attachments are listed by name, not dumped.
PDF, one response
From the response itself. A formatted document for sharing or attaching to a ticket. One response, not the conversation.
A habit worth forming: when an answer is one you know you will need again, export it immediately. Four seconds, and far more reliable than assuming you will find the thread.
A five-minute monthly pass
- Unpin anything finished.
- Rename any pinned thread whose title no longer describes it.
- Export anything you will want after retention takes it.
- Delete anything containing something you would rather not have on disk.
- Check the retention setting still matches how you work.
There is no cloud copy and no sync, so this archive is yours to maintain. That is the tradeoff of local-first: nobody else can read it, and nobody else will tidy it.