Source of truth

The replay already proved the uncomfortable part: chats are scripts, not storage. When the window closes, the work either lives somewhere a next window can read — or it's gone.

The folder race above makes the second half of the argument. Five spreadsheets and a question: you, hunting by hand, against one database answering in milliseconds. Same facts in both. The difference is structure — data with a shape is data you can ask, and what you can ask, an AI can ask a thousand times without you.

So every real project needs a home. It barely matters which:

• A folder of plain files. Markdown notes, a journal the AI writes after each session, the documents that matter. Breadcrumbs a fresh window can follow.
• A tool you already live in. Notion, Google Drive — anywhere the current truth sits, that a project or connector can point at.
• A repository or a database, when the work is code or data. Versioned, revertible, askable.

The hot/cold toy names the pattern: a small hot core the window carries every time (who you are, what the goal is, where things stand) and a cold archive it can reach into when needed. That's all "the AI remembers my project" ever is — a home, plus a habit of loading from it.

Say it back in one line: if you opened a brand-new chat right now, where would it read your project's current truth from?