Merriweather.
Help topics
  1. Getting Started
  2. The Menu Bar
  3. Today and the Ledger
  4. Meetings
  5. Follow Through
  6. Knowledge
  7. Memory and Ask
  8. Assistants
  9. Engagements and Accounts
  10. Privacy
  11. Troubleshooting
Help · 07

Memory and Ask

What memory keeps, how it asks you to settle doubts, and why Ask is still early.

What memory keeps

Memory is a set of short statements about an engagement, such as who committed to what, what was decided, and what a term means. Each one carries two things:

  • Where it came from: said in a meeting, from a document, from the code in a project's repository, or your word.
  • How sure Merriweather is: confirmed, agreed by two sources, taken as given, as said, a guess, in question, or withdrawn.

Meetings, documents, follow-through items, known terms, and project tags all feed it. Each engagement has its own memory. Nothing crosses between them.

Earlier meetings are read into memory in the background. Ask shows how many are left.

Questions in the Ledger

When memory is unsure, it asks. The question appears in today's Ledger, in time order with your work. It never interrupts you.

Each question offers:

  • Still true, to confirm it.
  • Correct, then say what is true.
  • Leave uncertain, to keep it as it is.
  • Done, on a commitment that has come due.

Your answer is kept as your word.

Today also shows a few notes from memory under the day's brief.

What Changed

Open Knowledge and choose the What Changed tab. It lists, newest first, the things memory remembered that have since changed. Each shows what it said then and what it says now, where the change came from, and how sure it was before. A note says when the new source is weaker. Open items are marked OPEN, and settled ones RESOLVED.

Ask

Ask is early. Treat it as an experiment.

Choose Ask in the menu, type a question about the engagement, and press Ask. The on-device model writes the answer from what memory holds. Below it you see:

  • RESTS ON, the numbered statements it used, each with how sure it is and where it came from.
  • NOT SETTLED, statements that are in doubt.
  • WAITING ON YOU, questions you have not answered, with a link to the Ledger.

A line at the foot says who wrote the answer. If no model is available, it says so and lists what memory holds, in order.

Answers can be thin or wrong. Check the numbered statements before you rely on one. Ask works only from what is already remembered. It does not search the web.

For a dependable account of a repository or a wiki, ask an assistant to write it into the journal. See Assistants.