A chat is a single conversation. A project is a folder of related chats that also carries its own standing instructions. Together they are how you keep months of AI work findable instead of scrolling through an undifferentiated list. This is one of the features of Secret Chat AI, the AI aggregator that keeps your history in your own browser.
Chats
- Start one by sending a message. There is no "create chat" step — type and send, and the conversation appears in the sidebar, named automatically from what you asked.
- Rename it. The auto-generated name is a starting point. Rename any chat from its menu in the sidebar when it turns into something else.
- Switch models inside it. A chat is not bound to the model that started it. Change model from the dropdown and keep going — the conversation carries over, which is what makes asking a second model to check the first one's answer a one-click operation.
- Delete it. Deleting asks for confirmation, and it is final: the chat lives in your browser, so there is no server-side copy to restore it from.
Projects
Create a project for a piece of work that will span more than one conversation — a case, a client, a book, a house move. Chats inside a project sit under it in the sidebar rather than in the general list.
- Project instructions. Every project can carry its own system prompt, applied to every chat inside it. "You are helping me with a contract dispute in California; be precise about dates and quote the clause you are relying on" only has to be written once. See custom instructions.
- Move chats in and out. A conversation that turns out to belong to a project can be moved into it later, and moved back out again.
- Rename and delete. Both are available from the project's menu; deleting asks for confirmation first.
Finding things again
- Filter the sidebar. Type into the filter box and the chat list narrows to matching names as you type — usually faster than scrolling once you have a few hundred conversations.
- Threads stay attached. A conversation branched off another appears nested under its parent rather than as an unrelated entry, so the shape of a long exploration stays visible. See threads.
- Clear everything. Two "broom" buttons empty the chat list and the project list wholesale, for when you want a clean browser rather than a tidy one. Both confirm first.
Where all of this is stored
Projects, chats, messages and attachments live in your own browser — IndexedDB for the conversations, OPFS for files — not in a database on our servers. Three practical consequences follow from that, and they are worth knowing before you rely on the app:
- Clearing your browser data deletes them. Not "archives" — deletes. There is no server-side copy for us to restore.
- They do not follow you to another device. Nothing syncs, because there is nothing on our side to sync from.
- Export is your backup. It produces a ZIP of every project, chat, message and attachment, which Import loads into any browser. If you keep anything you would miss, export it periodically.
That is the trade the app is built around: the reason your conversations cannot be handed over, correlated or mined is that we do not hold them. Keeping your own copy is the price of that.