Set up PCS on Windows.

With the vault unlocked, choose Load saved threads on the welcome screen to check saved threads, open Kept-for-later notes, local Materials and upcoming open Calendar plans. This is a local check, not an AI request. Choose a Calendar time zone to see upcoming plans.

Open a thread, reader or Calendar item to inspect it. Your most recently updated pinned open thought appears first, or a recent open kept thought when none is pinned. Expand its wording, sources and warnings, then choose Review & continue. PCS prepares an editable draft with your stopping point and next step, while protecting an existing unsent draft. Sending remains your choice. Load again when you want current results.

With personal-memory sharing enabled, Local can check saved context for a question about you or an earlier project without a separate “use memory” command. The optional Help notice relevant memories in conversation setting is separate from that check; it is also included in the setup guide’s reviewed Recommended continuity choice. See the choices and connection differences.

The Map opens on Constellations. Themes come from saved labels and repeated wording; in Local memory, each saved observation counts, and the people, places and projects it names become linked themes. Follow a theme into Focus, use Compare with… to explore a route, or try Discover a connection. Inspect its supporting records in the side panel and leave your own connection note or landmark. Filters and coverage are under Map settings; saved views and connection notes are under Views & notes. A kept thought can Explore in Map with a temporary reminder of its title and next step. The separate Jev Library exploration trial requires review before sharing saved excerpts with TypeSafe.

Attach or drop a UTF-8 .txt or .md file into Conversation. Review the complete text, then place it in an empty chat draft, open a Keep review, or choose Save reviewed text in Materials. Review alone does not send it to a provider.

The attachment limit is 480,000 bytes and 120,000 characters. Chat and Keep have smaller limits; an action that cannot fit leaves the attachment intact rather than shortening it. HTML and other document types belong in the ordinary Materials workflow below.

Saving in Materials requires PCS to be stopped and writes the exact text as an ordinary, unencrypted local file outside the vault. It needs a separate backup. An identical retry reuses the copy; another file is not overwritten. Web source drafts and previews remain separate.

Before Start, choose a Conversation pace: Follow my lead, Think with me or Take the lead. Wait for confirmation that your starting pace was saved; use Quiet for now or Stay here during a conversation to pause optional suggestions or keep the current direction. With Don’t save selected, the pace choice stays in this page.

The default Companion direction now asks for calmer, proportionate replies and fewer routine follow-up questions. Exact recognized factory wording can update; custom directions stay as written. Conversation initiative, pace and PCS Perspective choices remain separate and are not reset by that direction change.

Local also offers Allow brief quiet-moment openings in Local. It is off by default and is not restored from saved Settings. Explicitly choose it with Take the lead before Start. Openings require a focused, quiet Conversation page and stop when you type, leave, choose Quiet or Stay here, or Stop. The option can add a Local request before a reply. Read the limits and setup

Use Keep a stopping point below the composer to title and write where you stopped. Add an optional next step and pin the thought for your return. You can also use Keep wording for later on supported saved records and messages. Review the complete wording, title and recorded author. Keeping a quotation does not turn it into your own belief or automatically share it with a model.

The encrypted Kept for later shelf holds up to 128 items. Edit your own note, mark it resolved, reopen it or delete it. Saved quotations keep their wording and authorship; your next step stays separate. Continue places the complete, labeled wording in an empty conversation draft for review; it does not send it. Add quoted thought… can place a separate quotation in an existing notebook’s general notes or a lesson, or a new Calendar task, goal or event. Write your framing separately, inspect the preview, then save.

If the save result is uncertain, use Check unconfirmed addition before trying again. Removing a shelf item leaves an already-saved quotation in its destination; remove that quotation there. Quoted contributions remain separate from ordinary model-facing note text.

Enable saving and learning, then inspect the result in Continuity → Library. Open its sources and correct an interpretation if it misses your meaning. Use Settled, links & lessons to mark an exact revision as your current view, connect how ideas developed, or keep a named lesson with its story and supporting memories. Library search includes separate My Map notes and Practice history scopes, with coverage limits shown. Use Saving & memory health to check pending work. Follow the memory workflow

Review the selected provider’s audio settings, enable Use microphone, Start, and allow browser access. For Local, Meta, Claude, ChatGPT or OpenRouter, select a listening pack and reply engine under Settings → Optional tools → Local listening & voice. Local voice choices

In Documents, open the Materials folder and add a supported PDF, EPUB, Office, OpenDocument, RTF, subtitle, HTML or common text/code file. Refresh while stopped and inspect its extraction coverage; scans need OCR elsewhere. Read manually, or review the provider and source scope before preparing notes. Prepare book works through an approved bounded sequence, saving a checkpoint after each portion. Resume preparation reviews the remaining scope. Local portions can use up to 80,000 source characters when the complete request fits. Search saved notes by topic and inspect coverage or extraction omissions. Keep questions and next steps in a notebook.

Choose a readable PDF or saved Web source, then Read along. An available local browser/OS voice speaks the extracted text and pauses at section boundaries. Discuss what we read prepares a recent passage and question for review before sending; Return to reading resumes the paused source.

Save bookmark keeps an encrypted position tied to that extraction. Materials → Documents → Resume reading also lets you review and remove old positions when the original changed or disappeared. Reading alone does not form memories or send the source to an AI.

Use Materials → Web sources, or Read / save source beside a research citation. Explicit capture supports readable public pages, PDF/EPUB, RSS/Atom and selected GitHub, MediaWiki and Stack Exchange responses. Review the available text and coverage before saving. Sign-ins and script-rendered pages remain outside static capture.

A saved source is a retained snapshot. Preview updated version keeps its reader and history link; review and save the new snapshot separately. Local AI does not turn on downloads automatically.

See Materials and source coverage

Open Activity to set details manually or review which saved memories may be used in that scope. For spoiler-limited stories, inspect complete current memories before approving them. Changed activity settings and saved accounts need fresh review; some changes apply in a fresh conversation. Enabled public research has its own permission and needs no extra activity approval. Spoiler avoidance is best effort.

Automatically follow my current activity and its classification tools are removed. Ordinary saved-context sharing no longer waits for a model to classify the conversation; manual activity details, approvals and Conversation pace remain available.

Explore another perspective is a separate reflection using a question and up to six saved accounts you select. Review sharing and evidence, then save only what you choose. Recognition and question relevance remain experimental. Activity and reflection guide

PCS Perspective is an optional, separate space in your encrypted vault for PCS’s interests, interpretations and open questions. Recommended continuity enables it with independent interests for new vaults. Open PCS Perspective beside Activity and review Enable PCS Perspective, Allow independent interests and Allow thinking pauses with microphone input off, then Save choices. Inspect wording, evidence references, uncertainty, model authorship, revision history and its separate Map.

Independent exploration runs in the background with microphone input on; anything you say ends the running step. A completed thought can wait for a later quiet moment for up to ten minutes. Focused pauses turn microphone input off only when PCS requests one in conversation or you choose Explore now with that permission. Use Return to conversation to interrupt: PCS cannot hear you while input is off. When a pause PCS requested ends, its result goes back to the conversation so PCS can say what it concluded.

Exploration requires an eligible running saving conversation and uses the displayed Preparation model, including OpenRouter or matching Local. It can send recent saved conversation and saved perspectives to that model and make extra requests; relevant views may also reach the Conversation model. It does not independently browse the web or read Materials. This is distinct from selected-memory reflection and does not establish subjective experience. Perspective controls and sharing

For saved Practice, create a Tutoring & practice notebook with a lesson, enable Remember my practice, then use Practice → Choose lesson after Start. Submit answers through the Practice card to keep those attempts. A correction that finishes after you edit again preserves the later draft. Recovered correction text is offered for manual copying into its original attempt after you inspect the saved assessment; PCS does not replay the save.

Open Calendar to create a local task, goal or event. Check its time zone and saved result. Choose Only when I ask if you want AI changes limited to direct Calendar requests. Calendar has no external sync or reminder delivery.

1. Leave the vault unlocked, stop the conversation and let background work settle.
2. Open Settings → Privacy & maintenance → Backup & restore. Choose Save current backup… for a copy using the vault passphrase, or Create protected backup… for a separate backup passphrase. Choose the destination in Save As and wait for the confirmed save.
3. Copy original Materials separately; they are outside the vault.
4. Use Quit PCS and wait for PCS closed.

A readable export is useful for reading; it is not a restorable encrypted vault backup. Prepared reading notes and retained Web sources are included in the vault backup; original local Materials files are not.

Optional automatic backups run while PCS is open, its browser page is connected, the vault is unlocked and the conversation is stopped. They pause during Don’t save. They retain the newest automatic copy from each of the 14 most recent days and 8 most recent weeks. Keep a separate copy if you need it beyond that window.

1. Extract the complete new Windows ZIP into a fresh folder and open Start PCS.exe. Do not create a vault there.
2. Choose Restore an encrypted backup instead. Select the .pcs file and enter that backup’s passphrase, which may differ from the old working vault’s.
3. Choose Check backup. Review the record counts and minimum PCS version, then choose Restore this backup. Restore never replaces or merges an existing vault.
4. After confirmed restore, unlock with the backup’s passphrase. Copy unchanged original Materials into data/Materials, preserving filenames, contents and subfolders, then use Refresh list while stopped.
5. Choose the automatic-backup destination again after restoring. Keep Local model and speech files in their existing separate folder and reselect them if needed. Inspect memories, notebooks, prepared notes, Calendar and Settings before relying on the restored copy. Keep the old installation and backup until these checks are complete.

Never run two installations against the same data directory. Native encrypted backup/restore supports vaults up to 2 GiB. Saved features can raise the minimum supported PCS version. OpenRouter connection data requires 0.9.151 or later; new OpenRouter helper data and Practice assessments exceeding the former 4 KiB record limit require 0.9.152 or later. Earlier requirements still apply, including 0.9.122 for PCS Perspective, 0.9.126 for native Claude/ChatGPT features and Local research, 0.9.130 for the newer cloud search index and 0.9.134 for Claude/ChatGPT memory-thread suggestions. Opening or browsing alone does not activate these requirements; removing a newer record does not lower a recorded floor. Check backup reports that copy’s actual minimum. See reader compatibility and the current release notes, and keep the pre-upgrade backup for rollback.

After upgrading an existing Map connection index, choose Map settings → Coverage → Finish indexing to rebuild it locally. 0.9.139 records each Local observation in the index, so earlier index entries are not used until this finishes; meanwhile the Map reads up to 1,500 matching memories directly. This does not rewrite your memories or contact a provider.

The old proactive-help controls and automatic activity following remain retired. Save settings clears their old saved controls; manual Activity details remain. If a Jev approval included a retired setting, review it again. Replace any saved direct-Qwen connection explicitly; PCS does not choose another provider for you.