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[Feat] Multiple chat sessions per notebook #97

Description

@mrsibe

Context

A notebook holds exactly one conversation, and SessionAutoSwitchService rolls it over silently when it approaches the context budget. The consequences:

  • every topic in the notebook shares one thread, and its context,
  • the user cannot start a genuinely separate line of inquiry,
  • the automatic rollover is a backend event the user can neither see nor navigate.

PRODUCT.md already records this as confirmed by the maintainer. Open Notebook ships multiple chat sessions as a normal capability; it is the difference between "a chat box next to your documents" and a research workspace.

Proposal

Give a notebook many named sessions:

Notebook: Transformer
├── Understanding attention
├── Complexity derivation
├── Comparison with RNNs
└── Blog outline
  • A session list beside the chat zone; + New chat creates one.
  • Sessions are named manually, or derived from the first message.
  • Each session keeps its own messages and its own retrieval scope, where fine-grained context is in play.
  • Auto-rollover becomes visible: when a session rolls over, the user sees the archive boundary and can open the archived session. No silent context loss.
  • Search across sessions from the session list (message search, not just titles).

Acceptance

  • Multiple sessions per notebook, switchable without losing state
  • Opening a notebook returns to the last-used session
  • The auto-switch rollover is visible in the UI and the previous session is reachable
  • Deleting a session is confirmed and does not delete the notebook or its sources
  • Existing notebooks with a single session migrate without data loss

Verification

Create 3 sessions in one notebook, ask a question in each, restart the app, confirm all three survive with the right message history. Force a context rollover and confirm it is visible.

Depends on

The session/message schema change is additive. Provenance (#69) stores citations on messages, so citations must survive a session switch.

Activity

  1. added this to the v1.5 milestone on Sep 25, 2026
  2. added
    enhancementNew feature or request
    area:uxInterface, workflow, information architecture
    on Sep 25, 2026
  3. modified the milestones: v1.5, v1.6 on Sep 28, 2026
  4. mrsibe commented on Sep 30, 2026

    @mrsibe
    OwnerAuthor

    Implemented and merged in #188 (merge commit ed5689e). The PR body used Fixes #97, but the linked issue was not auto-closed on merge, so closing it here.

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    area:uxInterface, workflow, information architectureenhancementNew feature or requestpriority:P1High value, current or next milestone

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