# What Canto remembers

> Remembered items that carry decisions and open loops from one chat to the next, searching past chats, and how to see, edit or forget them.

Applies to Canto 1.0 beta 3 · Updated Oct 10, 2026 · https://lonelyduck.io/docs/canto/memory

Canto can carry what you settled in one chat into the next: a decision, a preference, a commitment you made. It can also look up what you discussed in earlier chats. Both are kept in your vault on your Mac, both can be switched off, and every item can be seen, changed or forgotten.

"Memory" here means what Canto keeps between chats. The ring around the model chip in Ask is something else: how full the current chat is in the model's memory (see [Models on your Mac](https://lonelyduck.io/docs/canto/models)).

## Remembered items

A remembered item is one short statement, of one of six kinds:

| Kind         | For example                                   |
| ------------ | --------------------------------------------- |
| Decision     | "We're launching on the 14th, not the 7th."   |
| Commitment   | "I'll send the draft to Mina by Friday."      |
| Preference   | "Answer in Korean unless I write in English." |
| Project fact | "The staging server is the one in Frankfurt." |
| Open loop    | "Still need to choose a payment provider."    |
| Correction   | "The budget is $40k, not $30k."               |

When an item matters to what you're asking, Canto brings it into the chat: a few at a time, at most six per message. An answer that used remembered items lists them in its **Context used** line, each with why it was used, **Open** (the chat it came from), **Mark done** for commitments and open loops, and **Forget**.

### Keeping something

* **From a chat**: under an answer, **⋯ › Remember this…** opens the **Remember** sheet with the statement filled in. Choose its kind and whether it belongs to you (**Personal**) or to one project, then save.
* **Yourself**: **Remember…** on the Remembered page, or on a project's page.
* **From suggestions**: with **Settings › Memory & privacy › What Canto remembers › Suggest new items** on (it's off), Canto proposes items after a chat settles something. They wait in the Inbox and on the Remembered page with **Keep**, **Edit…** and **Not now**. Nothing is kept until you say so. Suggestions are written by the chat's own model.

## The Remembered page

**Remembered** is in the sidebar's Library (⌘K: **Open Remembered**). It shows **In use**, **Suggested** and **Needs review**, with **Completed**, **Replaced** and **Archived** under **More**. Filter by kind or by scope (Personal or a project), or search.

Each row says what kind it is, which chat it came from and when. Its **⋯** menu (or a right-click) has **Edit…**, **Pin**, **Mark done**, **Replaced by** (a newer item takes its place), **Archive** (kept, but no longer brought into chats), **Open the source chat** and **Forget…**, which deletes the item for good after asking.

**Needs review** lists items whose source chat was deleted, so you can check them.

## Searching past chats

A chat can also look up what you discussed before, when it helps: "what did we decide about the pricing page?" Answers that use an earlier chat cite it, and the citation opens that chat at the right message.

* **Recall past chats**, in the composer's **Sources** menu, turns it on or off for one chat.
* **Keep out of recall**, in a chat's right-click menu (in the sidebar or All chats), means that chat is never searched. **Include in recall** undoes it.
* **Settings › Memory & privacy › What Canto remembers** has the rest: **Search past chats** (on), **Find past chats by** **Words**, **Meaning** or **Both** (Both), **Index chats by meaning** (on, done on your Mac in the background) and **Index all chats again**.

## Turning it off

In **Settings › Memory & privacy › What Canto remembers**:

| Switch                           | Default | Off means                                                                          |
| -------------------------------- | ------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Remember what you are working on | On      | No remembered items are brought into chats. Your items stay until you forget them. |
| Suggest new items                | Off     | Canto never proposes items.                                                        |
| Per project                      | Same    | Suggestions for each project: **Same** as Suggest new items, **On** or **Off**.    |
| Search past chats                | On      | No chat looks up earlier chats.                                                    |
| Same rules for other apps        | On      | Apps connected over MCP see past chats only as a chat in Canto would.              |

**Everything Canto remembers** opens the Remembered page.

## Where it goes

Remembered items and the chat index are in your vault on your Mac, encrypted like your notes. They go into a chat's prompt like any other context: when a chat runs on a model on your Mac, nothing leaves it; when a chat runs on a cloud model, the items and past chats it uses go to that service with the rest of the chat. See [Servers and cloud models](https://lonelyduck.io/docs/canto/servers#what-a-cloud-chat-sends).