# Second Brain

Second Brain is the memory behind Ask Alfred. The best of your research thinking happens in conversation, and most of it usually disappears when you close the chat. Second Brain keeps it: after each conversation, Alfred captures the durable learnings, your research directions, decisions, preferences, and conclusions, as connected notes in your workspace. The notes are yours to edit, they link to each other, they trace back to the conversations that made them, and they feed future answers so Alfred picks up where you left off.

## What Alfred captures

When a conversation with Alfred ends, Second Brain writes down what is worth keeping and leaves out the small talk. That means:

- **Research directions** you are exploring or ruling out.
- **Decisions** you reached, such as a method you settled on or a framing you chose.
- **Preferences** you expressed, so Alfred works the way you like.
- **Conclusions** you drew from the papers you discussed.

Each note is filed into a folder automatically, so your memory stays organized without a weekly tidy-up.

## Automatic, and pausable

Second Brain runs quietly in the background. You do not add a note-taking step to your workflow; you just talk your work through with Alfred as you already do.

If you would rather keep a conversation off the record, pause capture. No notes are created while it is paused, and you can turn it back on whenever you like.

## The notes are yours

Automatic capture gives you a first draft. From there, everything is under your control:

- **Browse, rename, move, and delete** notes like any other document in your workspace.
- **Edit freely.** Once you change a note, Alfred never overwrites your words. Your edits are the final say.

## How notes connect

Notes are not a flat pile. They form a map of your thinking:

- **Wikilinks** connect related notes, so a decision made in one place links to wherever it matters.
- **Backlinks** show every note that points to the one you are reading, so context finds you instead of the other way around.

## Everything traces back

Every note traces back to the conversations that produced it. You can always follow a claim to where it came from, the same way answers in Ask Alfred cite the page. Nothing in your Second Brain is a black box.

## Alfred remembers

Because your notes feed new conversations, Alfred carries your context forward: the direction of the thesis, the method you settled on, the papers you trust. You re-explain less and think more.

## Availability

Second Brain is available on the **Pro** and **Lab** plans, and during your trial. See [Plans & Billing](/docs/v1.x/plans-and-billing) for details.

## Next steps

- **[Ask Alfred](/docs/v1.x/chat-with-documents)** - Ask focused questions about your papers; every conversation feeds your Second Brain.
- **[Writing Manuscripts](/docs/v1.x/writing-manuscripts)** - Draft your paper with the notes your conversations left behind.