Searching your conversations
Two ways to find the thing you know you discussed three weeks ago, and what each one can actually see.
There are two ways to get back to something, and they work differently.
1. The search box: exact words
Press ⌘K (Ctrl+K outside a Mac), or click Search in the sidebar, and type. Two characters is the minimum.
This searches the full text of every message in every conversation you have, yours and Asteria's alike. Results are grouped by how recent they are (Today, Yesterday, "5 days ago") with a snippet of the matching message, and a count of any further matches in the same conversation. Click one to jump straight there.
It matches words, so it rewards distinctive ones. "Q3" and "churn" will find it. "the report about that thing" will not.
2. Just asking: meaning, over summaries
You do not have to leave the conversation. Ask in plain language:
What did we decide about the pricing tiers last month?
Have we looked at this supplier before?
Asteria goes and searches your past conversations by meaning rather than by keyword, favouring recent ones, and tells you what it found. This is the better tool when you remember the topic but not the words anybody used.
It also happens without you asking: on the first message of a new conversation, summaries of earlier conversations that look relevant to what you just typed are pulled in automatically. That is why a fresh chat sometimes already seems to know what you have been working on.
It searches summaries, not transcripts. Each past conversation is boiled down to a summary, and that summary is what gets searched and what comes back.
So a broad question ("did we discuss pricing?") works well, and a precise one ("what exact figure did you quote on 3 March?") may not, because the figure may not have survived into the summary. When you need the exact wording, use the search box to find the conversation, then open it and read.
Which to reach for
| You remember | Use |
|---|---|
| A distinctive word or number | The search box |
| Roughly what it was about | Just ask |
| That it was recent, nothing else | The sidebar, grouped by date |
What neither one searches
- The contents of your uploaded files. A phrase inside an attached PDF will not turn up. To search inside documents, put them in a collection and ask questions of it.
- Other people's conversations, including in shared workspaces.
- Temporary conversations that have expired, which no longer exist.
A better habit than either
Rename conversations you know you will return to, and file project work in a workspace. Searching is for the conversations you did not expect to need again, which is exactly why it should be the second resort rather than the filing system.