Journal
The assistant's diary. One entry per remembered stretch of conversation, plus the always-on notes it keeps about you and your work. You can read, search, edit and organize both.
The Journal is where SyntrofAI writes down what happened. After a conversation, it files an entry, called an episode, that records what was asked, decided and done. It also keeps a set of always-on notes about you and your work, and it hands those notes to Nova at the start of every turn.
Open Memory and pick the Journal tab.
What is in the Journal
| Folder | What it holds |
|---|---|
| journal | Episodes: one Markdown file per remembered stretch of conversation, with dated file names. |
| active_state | The always-on notes about you, your preferences, recent work, focus, open loops and constraints. Badges show live (written by the system) or synth (summarized), and how recently each was updated. |
Episodes are written in the background after conversations. By default the summaries run about every ten minutes, so a new episode can take a little while to appear.
The command bar
Across the top:
- Journal, the Workspace menu, and Find path... (filters the file tree by path).
- Search text... with Search and Clear.
- Refresh, Folder, New File, Save, Rename, Move, Delete, Copilot and More.
Read and edit
- The library header shows the workspace and how many files and folders it holds. Mark switches multi-select on and off.
- Click a file to open it in the editor. Change it, then press Save (Ctrl + S). Save turns on only after a change.
- Live notes are written by the system and are read-only. The fixed notes in active_state cannot be renamed, moved or deleted.
Search the Journal
- Search text... looks for the exact text you type, ignoring case, across journal and active-state files. Each hit shows a journal or state badge, the file, a snippet and how many times it matched. The header reads "Keyword matches: N (scanned M files)".
- Find path... narrows the tree by file name and folder.
- The tab has no date filter. To ask about a period, ask Nova in chat, for example "what did we decide last week". It can narrow its Journal search to a time span.
Create and organize
- Press New File to open Create Journal File. Pick a Folder, optionally a File name, and a File type: Session Log, Journal Note, Decision, Artifact, Research, Plan, Retrospective or State Update.
- Press Folder to create a folder.
- Use Rename, Move or Delete on the open file. Delete asks first.
- To act on several episodes at once, set Mark to On, tick them, then use More → Move Marked, Delete Marked or Clear Marks.
Journal Copilot
Press Copilot to open a side drawer for talking about the Journal itself.
- Send asks a question about what happened, for example "when did we last change the pricing page?".
- Apply Guidance saves an instruction that steers future summaries, for example "always keep client names and dates".
- Update State rewrites the always-on notes now, instead of waiting for the next summary.
- Reset starts a new Copilot conversation. Changing the workspace also restarts it.
- Active State shortcuts jump to one note: User, Preferences, Messages, Carryover, Focus, Open loops, Constraints or Structure.
- The drawer also has a Directives button.
More
- Export ZIP downloads the workspace's Journal as a ZIP file.
- Import ZIP brings one back. It warns you first, because it can overwrite files.
- Synth Analysis rebuilds the always-on notes from the episodes.
Advanced Journal Processing, a collapsible panel under the command bar, holds operator settings such as the summary interval. Leave the defaults unless you have a reason to change them.
Limits
- Only Markdown files appear. An empty workspace shows "No journal files found."
- Text search lists up to 400 files.