The Index

The Index is the right rail of a night that has been told enough to have names. It is not a second chat. It is the drawers the nights file themselves into: People, Places, Weather, Spiritual, Feelings. Empty drawers stay hidden. If you have only written fragments with no one in them yet, you will not see a People drawer pretending to be full. When a drawer has something, it shows a count. Open it.

What lands in each drawer

• People — named or not. A wife, a kid, a stranger who knew your name, someone you haven't seen in years. When a bond is known, it sits on the line: the name, then a short gloss. "Mara — sister." The same person returning across nights raises the count.
• Places — houses that aren't yours, hallways, cities you left, rooms that shouldn't exist, water where there shouldn't be water. Recurring places are how you notice the house is the same house.
• Weather — time of day, season, sky, rain on the glass, the air in the room. Not a forecast. The climate of the dream.
• Spiritual — what felt sacred, visited, forbidden, watched. Thresholds. A presence that wasn't a person you could name. This drawer stays quiet until something in that register actually showed up.
• Feelings — what you felt in it, and what was still on you when you woke. Not a mood tracker. The weather inside.

A line in a drawer can point at more than one journal. That is the point. The woman in the hallway is not a new woman every Tuesday. The Index is how you see that she has been here.

Using a name in the next thing you write

Right-click a line in a drawer (or two-finger click, or the long-press that brings a menu) and copy it as a reference. Paste into the composer. A chip appears — her name, the place, the feeling — so you are not retyping, and so Nalani knows you mean that specific thread, not a new person with a similar name. This is the cleanest way to ask "was she the same one as the kitchen" without narrating the last four nights again.

The Index is only on the entry view, and only when there is something to show. The panel button at the edge hides it when you want the thread wide. Hide it for the writing. Open it when you are looking for who keeps showing up.

It fills after a night has been sat with, not the instant you type the first fragment. Give the conversation a few turns. If a drawer is still empty, the night may not have had that kind of matter yet — or you have not named it. Naming is allowed to take weeks. "Someone" can sit unnamed until you are ready. Untied, on Paradigm, is where those unnamed things wait.