Side chats are useful because they let me ask small questions or explore adjacent ideas without interrupting the main working thread. I’d love for them to persist across browser/app restarts, login switches, and devices.
Core persistence behavior:
- Side chats should be saved like normal conversations.
- They should survive app/browser restarts.
- They should remain available when switching devices.
- If possible, they should remain recoverable when switching login sessions/accounts.
- They should stay attached to the parent thread or project.
If side chats persist, they probably also need a lightweight lifecycle:
- Create: start a side chat from any thread.
- Read: reopen previous side chats from the parent thread.
- Update: rename side chats.
- Archive: hide old side chats without losing them.
- Delete: remove side chats that are no longer useful.
Additional organization:
- per-thread side chat limits,
- automatic collapsing/archiving after inactivity,
- search across side chats,
- filters for active/archived/pinned,
- pinned side chats for important parallel topics,
- referencing from the main thread, e.g.
@sidechat pricing-notes.
Why this matters:
Side chats are great for quick clarifications, terminology questions, design discussions, and adjacent ideas. Persistence across sessions/devices would make them reliable, while lifecycle/search/pinning would prevent long-running threads from becoming cluttered.