# Use a conversation to find what is worth keeping

## Purpose

This guide is for people who do much of their reading, questioning or problem-solving through conversations with AI. It shows how to identify durable notes without treating every exchange as something to archive.

The conversation is a working space. The garden is a selected record. They should not be confused.

## Set up a working conversation

You can use a dedicated ChatGPT conversation or project, but you do not have to move every inquiry into it. A dedicated space is useful for setting preferences: what counts as a worthwhile note, how cautious the wording should be, which garden or subject it belongs to, and whether saving requires explicit approval.

Keep the instructions short enough to remember and correct. Do not assume the AI can inspect every earlier conversation automatically. Supply the relevant text, link or file when a particular extraction needs it.

## Explore before extracting

Let the conversation do its original job. Ask questions, test explanations and follow unexpected connections. Constantly asking “Is this a note?” can interrupt thinking as effectively as switching to a separate app.

At a natural pause, ask for candidate items. A useful request is:

> Look through the available conversation and identify only the thoughts I would plausibly want to encounter again. Do not summarise the whole exchange. For each candidate, give a specific title, a self-contained paragraph, what prompted it, and any uncertainty or source relationship that matters. Show me the candidates before saving.

This is a proposal, not a command to publish.

## Select and repair

Read the candidates for five common problems:

- Does the note make sense when the chat is gone?
- Does it preserve your actual question or distinction, rather than a tidier one the AI invented?
- Does it attribute a claim to a source when it is really your inference?
- Is a tentative thought presented as an established result?
- Is it duplicating an existing note that should be extended or linked instead?

You may keep one, combine two, ask for a revision or reject them all. A long conversation need not produce a harvest. Sometimes the value was in having it.

## Handle sources separately

When a paper or article matters, create a Source record with its title, author, link or citation, and any useful reading notes. If you have not read the whole source, say so. A Pebble can then record a question or interpretation and link back to that Source.

Ask the AI to separate what the source explicitly reported from what the conversation inferred. If exact quotations or factual claims will be published, check them against the original. A fluent summary is not a provenance system.

## Add useful metadata

Use a broad topic if it would help future browsing. Use a specific label if it gives you a likely search term. Add a link to another item only when the relationship is worth following. Record lightweight provenance such as “arose in discussion of [source]” or “working hypothesis from a conversation”.

Do not apply every plausible tag. The test is whether it improves rediscovery, not whether it describes every word in the note.

## Save through the connected tool, or manually

If the garden has a ChatGPT plugin, ask it to save the approved item and return its stable reference. Check the result in the site or retrieve it through the plugin. If no connection exists, paste the approved text into a Markdown file or notes system. The conversational method does not depend on a particular hosting product.

When you later change your mind, retrieve the existing item before revising or deleting it. Avoid creating a near-duplicate because the old title is hard to remember.

## Suggested standing instruction

> In this conversation, help me explore material first. When I ask for garden candidates, propose a small number of self-contained notes with specific titles. Distinguish source findings, my observations and your inferences. Retain useful uncertainty. Do not save or publish candidates until I approve them. Search the existing collection for possible duplicates when a connected tool is available. When saving, return the item’s stable reference and confirm the destination. When revising, retrieve the current record before changing it.

## A sustainable rhythm

Extract at pauses or after a substantial thread, not after every interesting sentence. Periodically return to a few saved notes and ask whether they are still useful. Repair titles, provenance and links as your understanding changes. The collection is allowed to evolve with the thinking it holds.