Managing Conversations

Every chat you have is kept in the sidebar, searchable and reopenable. This page covers tidying that list, deleting safely, and what happens when a conversation gets very long.

The Zinley Chat screen with the conversation history list down the left-hand side.
The sidebar keeps every conversation — grouped by time, newest first.

The conversation list

  • New chat — start a fresh conversation.
  • Search — find any past conversation by keyword.
  • Conversations are grouped by time — Today, Yesterday, Previous 7 days, and Older — newest first.
  • Each entry shows where it started (a source tag like [Web] or [Nghiem's MacBook]), its title, and how long ago it was.

Rename

Zinley names each conversation for you from the first few messages. If the name it picked isn't the one you'd search for later, rename it to something you'll actually remember.

The conversation list with a context menu open showing rename, pin, and delete options, and a pinned conversation at the top.
Your conversations — rename, pin, or move to Trash from the list.

Pin

Pin the conversations you keep coming back to and they stay at the top of the list, above the time groups. Unpin puts them back into normal order.

Good candidates: an ongoing project, a running list, the thread where you keep pasting things for later.

Delete, restore, purge

Deleting is a two-step process, so nothing disappears by accident.

  1. Delete — the conversation moves to Trash. It leaves your main list immediately but it is not gone.
  2. Restore — bring anything back out of Trash and into your list, exactly as it was.
  3. Purge — permanently destroy a conversation from Trash. This one can't be undone.

Items left in Trash are hard-deleted automatically after 30 days. If you want something gone right now, purge it; if you're unsure, just leave it in Trash and it'll clear itself.

How far back you can see

Your plan sets how much conversation history stays visible:

Plan History visible
Free 1 day
Plus 1 week
Pro 1 month
Max 3 months

Two important things about this:

  • Older conversations are hidden, not deleted. Nothing is destroyed when it passes your window — it just stops appearing in the list.
  • Upgrading brings it straight back. Move to a longer window and the older history reappears immediately.

The same window applies across your history everywhere — chats, email threads, call reviews, and your activity feed all use it. See Plan Limits for the full comparison.

Long conversations compact themselves

A conversation can only hold so much before it hits the model's context limit. Rather than cutting you off, Zinley compacts: it summarises the earlier part of the conversation into a condensed record and carries on with that plus the recent messages.

  • You may see a "compacting…" status appear in the stream while it happens. It's brief, and the conversation continues straight afterwards.
  • What's kept: the substance — decisions, facts, files you referenced, where you got to.
  • What's condensed: the verbatim back-and-forth of the early messages.
  • You can trigger it yourself with the /compact command, which is worth doing before starting a big new stretch of work in an already-long chat.

If a conversation has drifted a long way from where it started, a new chat is often better than compacting — Zinley still remembers you and your work across conversations (see Chat Basics).

Housekeeping tips

  • Rename anything you'll want to find again. Search works on titles.
  • One conversation per thread of work. Easier to reopen than one enormous catch-all.
  • Pin sparingly — three pinned conversations are useful, fifteen are a second list.
  • Empty your Trash when you delete something sensitive, rather than waiting the 30 days.

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