When: a conversation has produced something you will need again later. A decision, an understanding, a plan, the state of a piece of work. There will be a follow-up, with a person or with the AI, and when it comes you either have the context or you don't.
Built from: memory, the context window, retention, re-alignment, the standing file.
What to know: when the follow-up comes, the context is wherever you left it. Maybe the old conversation is still there. Maybe your logs are, if you kept them past the default. Maybe you wrote something down at the time, in a file, a database, whatever record you own. The first two depend on the provider's retention settings, and that is why the tree told you to change them. But even with everything kept, a summary written later is only as good as what was recorded, and if some of it was wrong then, you are building on a faulty memory and you won't know. Your own memory won't save you either. It degrades too.
So the answer is a record, made at the time, that says what was true at that point.
- Before the conversation ends, run re-alignment: ask the AI to state its understanding of the situation, what was decided, and what is still open. Correct it until it is right.
- Save that as a record. Not a summary of the chat, a statement of the truth as it stood then.
What makes a good record: think about how you will try to find it later. You won't remember the file name. You will remember roughly when it was, where you were, who was there, and what it was about. So every record carries those four: the date, the place, the people, and the topic in the words you would actually use to recall it. Then the note itself: what was true, what was decided, what was still open. A record with those four on it can be found by asking "what did we agree with the accountant about the lease, around the start of the month?" A record without them is a file you have to already know exists.
- Put it somewhere with structure, so it can be found by asking. That might be a folder per project or per person, or a table, or whatever you own. What matters is that the AI knows where to look, and isn't searching across a sprawling pile every time.
- When the follow-up comes, point the AI at the record. It starts from what was true, not from what it half remembers.
Author's practice: the record is written from the aligned understanding, not from the raw chat. It carries the date, place, people, and topic. It goes where the next conversation will look for it. The logs are kept too, as the record behind the record, but the note is what gets read.
As a skill: ask the AI to turn this page into a skill that runs re-alignment, writes the dated record with those four on it, and files it in the right place.