Files, search, and memory
Your Joshu keeps its work in plain files that you can open, and you can search everything with File Brain and see what it remembers.
User manual: all pages
Where your companion keeps its work
Your desktop has a folder named joshu's files. Your companion keeps all of its work there, in plain files that you can open, read, and change. The most important folders are:
| Folder | What is in it |
|---|---|
Projects | One folder for each of your projects, for example Projects/harbor-client. Each project has about.md (the goal, deadline, and status), todo.md (the next steps and who you are waiting on), and a journal with one file for each day. |
Projects/other | Things that do not belong to a project yet. |
Projects/_archive | Finished projects. |
Planning | Your daily capture list (ideas and tasks that you mention in chat or by phone), your morning and evening review, and your time-block plan for the day. |
Triage | Emails that your companion still has to file. Each note points to an email. |
connectors | Copies of your mail and calendar that your companion keeps up to date. |
Teams | Your notes for Multiplayer teams. |
How email becomes project work
When an important email arrives, your companion files it into the right project. It adds a line to the project's todo.md or journal, with a link back to the email. If somebody owes you an answer, your companion keeps track of it until the answer comes.
Project status
Each project has a status in its about.md: active, someday, reference, or done. Your companion reminds you only about active projects. To change a status, tell your companion, for example "Put the website project on someday."
PDFs and text files
You can drop a PDF or a .txt file anywhere on your desktop. Your companion makes a readable copy next to it (for example report.md next to report.pdf) so that it can search and quote the file. Scanned PDFs that contain only pictures of text cannot be read.
Search everything with File Brain
The File Brain app searches everything on your desktop, your mail copies included. You can type keywords, or ask a question in plain words, for example "What did the Harbor contract say about payment terms?". New and changed files can be found within seconds.
While File Brain updates its index, a small message appears at the top right of your desktop and then says "Indexing finished". Right after your box restarts, File Brain can show no pages for a few minutes while it rebuilds.
Your companion uses the same search when you ask it a question, so you rarely need to open File Brain yourself.
What your companion remembers
Your companion remembers your conversations: your preferences, the people you mention, and what you talked about last week. It saves and recalls these memories by itself, on every channel.
The Memory app shows what your companion remembers, as a map of linked memories or as a table. The Memory app is for looking only. If your companion remembers something wrong, tell it the right fact in chat, for example "Sam is my business partner, not my brother."
Next: Sharing your files.