Docs/Right sidebar/History

History

Every time a note is saved, Minerva keeps a copy of what it looked like before. This panel is where you read that record: a list of versions with the date, the time, and a line saying what produced each one — your own edit, a thinking tool, a restore. Pick a version to see what changed since, and put it back with one click if you'd rather have it.

This is not git

Nothing here needs setting up, and none of it is a commit. History is kept automatically, on this machine, for every note — including the .csv, .ttl and .py notes, not just the markdown ones. It lives in the .minerva folder beside your notes and never leaves your computer, so it isn't part of publishing and doesn't travel with a note you export. Renaming or moving a note — or a whole folder — takes its history along with it.

Reading the timeline

Versions are listed newest first. Each row carries two lines: when the version was saved, and what caused it.

The date and time
To the minute, because two versions saved a minute apart are exactly the ones you need to tell apart. The year is shown only when it isn't this one.
What caused it
The line underneath names the action, not the machinery. A save you made reads Edit. A change Minerva's AI made, once you approved it, names the command that produced it — a thinking tool's own name like Antithesize, a built-in like Auto-tag or Auto-link, Conversation for something filed from a chat, or what was done, like Claim filed or Note moved. One with nothing more specific to say reads Minerva AI. AI-caused lines are tinted in the accent colour, so you can see at a glance which changes were yours and which weren't.
Initial version
The oldest version of every note, and the one "undo everything" gets you back to. It's created the first time a note is written through Minerva — including for notes that already existed before there was any history, whose text is captured before your first edit lands on top of it. Its row stays in the timeline for good, so you can always see when a note first appeared, but its text ages out under the same limits as any unnamed version. Once it has, selecting it says This revision's content is no longer available. and offers no Restore. To keep a note's starting point indefinitely, name it.
Restored from…
Restoring is itself a save, so it appears as a new version naming the one you brought back. A timeline with several restores in it still reads in order.
A name
Versions you've named show the name as a chip on the right. See naming a version below.
The History panel showing five versions of a note — an AI rewrite, a version named 'before rewrite', an Auto-tag change, an edit, and the initial version — with the selected version's differences shown below as added and removed lines.
Screenshot — the History panel, with a version selected and its differences below

Comparing and restoring

Click any version to compare it with the note as it stands now. The count at the top says how many lines would be added and removed, and the lines themselves are listed below — added in green, removed in red.

Restore
Puts the selected version's text back into the note. Nothing is lost: the text you're replacing is saved as a version of its own first, so restoring the wrong one costs you a second click, not your work. The open editor reloads to match.
"Contents are identical"
Shown instead of a comparison when the version you picked matches the note's current text word for word — which happens for the newest version, and for any older one you've since edited your way back to. There's nothing to restore, so no button is offered.

Naming a version

A date and time tells you when something happened, not why it mattered. Right-click any version and choose Label Version… to give it a name — before rewrite, submitted draft, last good copy — and it becomes easy to find weeks later. Right-clicking a version that already has one offers Rename Label… and Remove Label instead.

Named versions don't expire

Unnamed versions are dropped once they age out of the retention window or fall off the per-note limit (see Settings → Versioning). A named version is exempt from both — naming one is how you keep a particular state of a note indefinitely.

Right-clicking a version in the History panel opens a small menu offering 'Label Version…'.
Screenshot — naming a version from the timeline

Naming several notes at once

A restore point is often bigger than one note. In the Notes panel, select the notes (or a folder) you're about to change, right-click and choose Label Version…: the current version of every note in the selection gets the same name. One name, one moment, however many notes — the thing to reach for before a refactor or a big AI-assisted pass.

Nothing is written into the notes themselves; the name is attached to their history, exactly as it would be from this panel. Notes that can't be labelled are reported afterwards, and the rest still get their restore point.

Looking back across several notes

This panel follows one note. To see what happened to a set of them — a folder after a big AI-assisted pass, say — select the notes or folder in the Notes panel (or right-click the thoughtbase itself), right-click and choose View Local History…. One timeline opens for everything in the selection, newest first, including notes that have since been deleted. Each row gives the time, whether the note was added, modified or deleted, its path, and what caused it.

Picking a moment
Click a row to pick that moment. The panel beside the timeline reads As of <time>: and lists every note in the selection with what reverting would do to it — will revert, will undelete, will remove, no change or skipped. Click a note in that list to see its changes.
Revert selection…
Puts every note in the selection back as it was at that moment: notes deleted since come back, and notes created since are deleted. It asks first (with a "Don't ask again" box), then sums up — Reverted to …: 2 reverted, 1 undeleted, 1 removed, 4 unchanged. Each note's current text is saved to its history before the revert changes or removes it — even an edit made in another app that history hadn't seen yet — so you can pick a moment just before the revert and go back.
Check the preview first

A note Minerva has never recorded a version of — one added by another app and never edited here — has no history to say when it appeared, so it counts as not existing yet at any past moment, and reverting removes it. The preview marks it will remove; read the list before you press Revert.

The View Local History dialog for a folder: a newest-first timeline of several notes' versions, including one marked deleted, with one moment selected and a per-note preview beside it reading will revert, will undelete and no change.
Screenshot — the history of a folder, with a moment picked and what reverting to it would do

Deleted notes keep their history

Deleting a note records its final text and then a Deleted marker, so its history outlives it. A deleted note no longer has a row in the Notes panel to right-click, but its old folder does: select that folder (or right-click the thoughtbase itself) and choose View Local History…, and the note is in the timeline. Pick a moment from before it was deleted and revert — that's how you bring a deleted note back. The marker is never pruned; the text ages out under the same limits as any other unnamed version.

How much is kept

By default a note keeps its unnamed versions for 30 days, up to 500 of them, and files over 1 MB aren't recorded at all. Versions you've named and delete markers are kept regardless. All three limits are adjustable — see Settings → Versioning.