Why AI Chats Need a Built-In Notepad

Did you ever need to keep track of the next questions you want to ask in the same AI chat, but in a separate document or file?

Thanks to ChatGPT and Gemini for the illustration

Although not very often, this happens to me. Some chat topics can be broad enough to cover multiple aspects where you may already have a list of questions in mind to ask later in the conversation. You can not ask them all at once in a single prompt, because the output wouldn't be as effective. Consider these:

• When you ask one question, the AI model answers it, plus it offers additional helpful suggestions. Sometimes they're highly relevant, so you don't want to skip them or postpone to another time. These follow-up ideas can make the chat even more productive, resulting in extra prompt-response pairs and a longer but richer conversation.
• As long as the follow-up suggestions are useful, you avoid rushing into your next planned question, since it would "distract" the AI model from the point being discussed at that moment or stage. The spontaneous development of the chat feels like the natural flow of a conversation.
• Depending on the direction the chat develops, you may need to reprioritize the questions in your list.
• Depending on the depth and complexity, the chat may not be wrapped up in an hour — it can extend over days or weeks as new ideas come up.

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With these factors in mind, let's remember:

You have a list of questions in mind. As you ask them, they get crossed off, while new ones may be added along the way. At this point, you need somewhere to note them down before you forget. If the AI interface doesn't offer a built-in notepad for these "temporary" notes, you end up scribbling them in a third-party app or on a "paper" notebook!

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Here's my recent case with ChatGPT:

It was kind of an "ultimate" chat in terms of its scope and importance for me. You can see the context of this example directly in the screenshot below.

Date of screenshot: June 12, 2025

Please notice the size of the scroll bar (pointed to with the red arrow in the top right). It gives an idea of the chat's length at that moment. Now, here's the list of pending questions I stored in a Google Doc:

Date of screenshot: June 12, 2025

👉 You see 5 questions remaining, right? What about the ones already asked? By the time this screenshot was taken, I had already asked 4 other questions and removed them from this list.

Later, my bulleted list evolved into an outlined list:

Date of screenshot: July 16, 2025

I believe this example proves that some AI chats can need a "meta-notepad".

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Call to Action

We invite all AI platforms to add a notepad feature inside their chat interface.

I've sketched a quick preview of what it could look like. The toggle button (pointed to with the red arrow) opens a pop-up notepad where the user can type their questions in mind and delete the ones already asked.

Thanks to Microsoft's Sticky Notes for the notepad preview

The notepad doesn't need to be sophisticated — it doesn't have to support bullets or checklists as in my example above. A simple text editor that stores notes within the chat would work just fine! 👍😉

For a smoother user experience, the pop-up notepad should automatically hide when the user clicks outside of it.

To be clear: the notepad should work per chat, built into the chat interface. A single shared notepad for the whole account wouldn’t be useful.

Dear Participant,

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