What's worth keeping

Sync what’s worth keeping. Everything you add is searched and curated, so clutter makes your results worse.

When you ask a question, the answer comes from the passages that match it best. A folder of templates, drafts or downloaded manuals competes with your own writing for those places. The curator reads everything too, and builds people, places and events from it, so clutter also slows how fast your real history is curated.

Good to leave out

• templates, scratch folders and drafts you’ve abandoned;
• downloaded manuals, terms and conditions, and other documents you didn’t write and wouldn’t ask about;
• exports from other apps that repeat what’s already in your archive;
• anything you wouldn’t want an answer to come from.

How to leave things out

• Email: on Gmail, leave mail out with a Gmail search. Promotions and Purchases are left out unless you change it. Automated and bulk mail, such as receipts, notifications and newsletters, is still searchable, but the curator skips it. See What curation does.
• Obsidian: list folders and patterns under Leave out in the plugin’s settings.
• Archivist Sync and uploads: choose the folders that matter, rather than your whole home folder.

Taking something out later

Delete it from the folder or vault it came from, and it’s removed from your archive at the next sync. For a document that’s in your archive but isn’t about anyone, Archive it from the reader: it stays searchable, and the curator ignores it. See Fixing what the curator got wrong.