Topic summary

A topic summary is the short status brief that sits above the transcript: where the topic stands, the actions still open, and the handful of facts needed to act. It is written by the model and owned by you — once you edit it, no refresh can silently overwrite your text.

The slim Summary bar beneath the topic header is always available, even before a brief exists. Its centered chevron expands or collapses the panel; refresh, edit and delete controls stay inside the expanded area. When empty, open it and choose Generate summary. Merely opening it does not call the model.

The document icon in the topic header and /show-summary remain shortcuts. By default a topic has no summary at all: nothing is generated until you ask. Pending suggestions remain visible as a small count on the collapsed bar.

Drag the bottom divider to resize the expanded summary. Its height is remembered in this browser and adapts to the available space without hiding the composer. The body scrolls when needed, including the full review and editor controls. The divider also supports touch and keyboard resizing: focus it and use ↑/↓, or Home/End for the minimum/maximum height.

Collapse the brief to keep the conversation in focus; the Summary bar remains within reach.

Accept or reject each change immediately, and resize the panel to review more at once.

Generating one

/update-summary (or the ↻ button in the panel) writes a brief from the topic's conversation, its /notes scratchpad and the names of the files attached to it. Add an instruction to steer it — /update-summary focus on what blocks the release.

The prompt uses the latest 40 non-tool messages (up to 2,000 characters each), up to 4,000 characters of scratchpad notes, and the latest 100 attached filenames. It does not independently read attachment contents. Empty or failed model responses leave the existing brief unchanged and display an error.

The first generated brief uses three sections, so it stays scannable and diffable:

## Status
- Release branch cut, QA in progress

## Actions
- [ ] Ask Bob for the signing cert
- [x] Tag rc2

## Key information
- Ship window closes Friday

Content is deliberately limited to real actions, updates and information — no retelling of the conversation.

Refreshing an existing brief is a minimal-update pass, not a rewrite. The model is instructed to preserve wording, formatting and ordering, and to change only material facts or actions supported by explicit updates. Repeated facts, paraphrases and missing mentions in recent history should not trigger changes. With nothing substantive to update, it is asked to return the existing text verbatim, including for a brief you have not edited yourself. You can still explicitly request a rewrite or reorganization in the command's instruction. This is prompt guidance, not a semantic filter; review suggestions before accepting them.

When a requested refresh completes without changing the brief or proposing any changes, the Saved status area briefly confirms “Summary refreshed — no changes”. It returns to the normal status after three seconds. The same confirmation appears for /update-summary.

Editing, and what happens next

Check or uncheck an action directly in view mode to mark it done or reopen it. The checkbox change is saved immediately; task lists elsewhere in the conversation remain read-only.

Double-click the summary text to edit its Markdown at the clicked position, or use the ✎ button. Links, action checkboxes and other controls keep their normal behavior. Changes autosave after a 1.2-second pause, with Saving…, Saved, or Not saved feedback. You can keep typing while a save is in flight. Done returns to view mode; leaving the editor, collapsing the panel, or navigating to another topic also flushes pending edits. There is no separate Save or Cancel step.

Edit the Markdown directly; changes save automatically without leaving the editor.

Both manual edits and checkbox changes mark the summary as yours. From then on:

• a refresh is told to treat your wording as authoritative and to keep it wherever it is still accurate — your edits carry more weight than the model's previous text;
• the new version is never written straight in. It is merged into the brief in place — each changed line or block shown right where it sits in the document, with the unchanged text around it — removed lines struck through in red, added lines in green, and a compact ✔ Accept / ✗ Reject pair sharing the same row (with tooltips and keyboard-accessible labels). Each decision is saved immediately and removes that suggestion, leaving the others pending. Accepting updates the brief; rejecting keeps that part of your text. Accept all and Reject all act only on the suggestions still pending. There is no final Apply step, and rejected changes cannot reappear from the same proposal when you accept another change later.

Everything is persisted server-side, so the brief (and whether the panel is expanded) survives reloads and updates other open windows immediately. Saving an edit or appending an item discards the old proposal because it was based on different text. A refresh with no changes creates no review.

If another window or scheduled run changes the brief while you are editing, generating, or reviewing it, the stale write is rejected rather than overwriting newer work. A failed save keeps your local changes visible. Use Retry save after a connection error, or copy any text you want to keep and choose Reload latest to explicitly discard the unsaved draft and use the latest server version. Unsaved drafts are also cached in the current tab so a failed save is recoverable after navigation or reload. Closing the browser tab with unsaved edits prompts a warning.

Slash commands

Command	What it does
/update-summary [instruction]	Generate or refresh the brief. On an edited brief, arrives as reviewable changes.
/show-summary	Expand the summary area.
/hide-summary	Collapse it — the text is kept.
/todo-summary <action>	Add a pending action to Actions.
/important-summary <information>	Add a fact to Key information so it survives future refreshes.

The 🗑 button asks for confirmation, then drops the summary entirely, returning the topic to having none.

All five commands also work from a scheduled topic prompt, so a recurring run can keep a brief up to date on its own — a refresh that lands on an edited brief leaves a note in the transcript instead of applying itself, and waits for your review.