Syncing your computer with the cloud
The workbench on your computer and the workbench in the cloud are each complete on their own. Syncing is a bridge between them, for the projects you choose: what you add on your laptop is there on your desktop, and what you write in the cloud comes home.
Nothing needs it. A project you do not choose never reaches the cloud, and unlinking your computer leaves everything on it as it is - including what came from the cloud.
Built Sync is built and being tested, with the cloud workbench.
Linking your computer
Once, on each computer, with a code. Your password is never typed into it.
- In the workbench on your computer, open Settings, then Sync, and choose Link.
- It shows a short code, such as
KQ7M-4TXW, and the address to confirm it at. - Open that address, signed in to the cloud workbench, check the code is the one your computer shows, and confirm it.
- Your computer says it is linked. Your account's page in the cloud lists it, with a way to unlink it.
Choosing what syncs
Project by project, in the project itself or in Settings.
- By hand. It syncs when you press Sync now, or Sync all for every linked project.
- Sends by itself. What you change on this computer goes to the cloud by itself; what changed there comes when you ask.
- Receives by itself. The other way round.
- Both ways by itself. In both directions, by itself.
By itself means every two minutes while the workbench is open, and straight after you import something: a paper you add on one computer is on the other within a few minutes of it being on again. Each project's page shows how it syncs, when it last did, and where a sync under way has got to - whether you started it or it started by itself.
On a project's page that is the Cloud sync card under its buttons, with Sync now. Settings, Sync has Sync all for every linked project at once.
A project that is in the cloud and not on this computer - one you started on another computer, say - is listed in Settings, Sync too, to bring here.
What travels, and what stays
Travels: the project and its folders; documents with their files; tags, highlights and notes; working copies and summaries; papers, their sections and sealed versions; returned reviews; claim checks; references; approvals; the record of every question put to a model; and your address book, with each project's lists of people and what was sent to them. Who changed each thing, and when, travels with it. Removing a document travels too, and it stays removed, and a person who withdraws their consent has it withdrawn everywhere.
Stays: what each side makes again for itself from the files - the text read from a paper, its first-page picture, its search index - and each side's settings. Privacy mode keeps everything, or only your notes, on your computer.
When both sides changed the same thing
Your writing is never overwritten.
Sync compares each thing field by field with the last time the two sides agreed. A change made on only one side is taken. The same change made on both is no conflict.
Where both sides wrote differently - a note, a comment on a highlight, a working copy, a section of a paper - each keeps its own, and Settings, Sync shows the two side by side for you to keep one or the other. Until you choose, neither is sent over the other.
Where both changed a smaller detail differently, such as a title, the cloud's is kept and your computer's is recorded beside it. The record of questions put to models is only ever added to: two different copies of the same record are reported, never merged.
Keeping things on your computer
Privacy mode, enforced where the cloud is reached.
- Prevent cloud sync. Nothing of your vault is sent to the cloud or fetched from it, whatever is linked. So does Never send anything to a hosted model.
- Keep all notes on this computer. Linked projects still sync, but the notes you write on documents, highlights, references and people do not leave your computer.
Both are kept in the part of the workbench that talks to the cloud, not only in the page that offers them, so no other part of the workbench can send what they keep back.