Penny's note controls solve different problems. You can pin a note you revisit, lock a record whose wording you want to preserve, or hide a note from ordinary AI search and proactive suggestions. Each control can be changed later in the dashboard.
Worked example: three workshop notes
Imagine you have three personal notes:
- A checklist you consult before each workshop.
- An agreed workshop format you want your AI to read without rewriting.
- An early idea you want to keep but leave out of ordinary AI searches.
Open Notes, find each note, and read its full contents. Use Pinned for the checklist, Lock for the agreed format, and Hidden for the early idea. Check that each control shows the state you selected. The controls apply separately; a note can have more than one enabled.
What each control changes
Pinned puts the note under Pinned in the Library sidebar. It helps you find it in the dashboard. Pinning does not turn the note into core memory or establish that an AI loads it in every conversation.
Lock prevents an AI from editing or replacing the note and prevents Penny from merging or pruning it. The AI can still read it. You can edit your own note through the dashboard; locking is not the same as making a record unreadable.
Hidden keeps the note out of ordinary Penny AI search and proactive suggestions. You can still inspect and search it in the dashboard. Hiding is useful for material you want to set aside without deleting it. It does not erase text already returned to an AI conversation, and it is not a way to grant one app access while denying another.
For a real confidentiality concern, review connections and the chosen AI provider's data controls. Do not use a hidden-note search experiment to send sensitive content into a chat.
Copyable prompt
Use harmless example notes for this check. Replace the subjects with your own and copy:
Search my Penny notes for the agreed workshop format and read the saved record.
Use it when preparing the outline. Don't change that record.
Explain what you found and whether the requested read succeeded.
If it cannot be found, report the read or search result rather than guessing.
A lock permits that read. If the format changes later, open the locked note yourself or deliberately change its control before asking the AI to revise it. Ask it to read the corrected version afterward.
Verify the result
- Select Pinned in the Notes sidebar and confirm the checklist appears.
- Reopen the agreed format and check that Lock is enabled and the saved wording remains intact.
- Select Hidden to inspect the early idea. Check its Hidden control and saved content.
- With the harmless example, ask for an ordinary AI search. The hidden idea should be excluded; a failed search request is not proof of exclusion.
- To bring the idea back into ordinary search, turn Hidden off and run a new successful search.
Use Trash when you intend deletion. Hidden preserves a note; it does not start a deletion or recovery period.