Folder Tree

The folder tree is the primary navigation surface in ThinkForge. It appears as a sidebar panel showing project content organized into collapsible sections — physical files and folders, workspaces, pinned items, shortcuts, recents, tags, tools, automations, Smart Clipboard, and trash.

Use the tree in Project Navigator or Floating Navigator to browse project content. Other views can show fewer sections or actions.

Sections

Expand a section to see its items:

Smart Clipboard — Items captured from the system clipboard. Accepts external file and text drops. Includes a Clear button. See Smart Clipboard for how items are captured and managed.

Workspaces — Named working contexts within the project. The header shows the workspace count. A + button creates a new workspace. Clicking a workspace activates it.

Pinned — Documents and folders you have explicitly pinned. Pinned items appear regardless of which folder is selected in the content area.

Shortcuts — Quick-access references to documents, folders, or tags. Shortcuts can be scoped to the current project or shown across all projects using an All / Project toggle on the section header. The default scope is All. Shortcuts can also be placed inside physical folders, where they appear inline with the folder's files.

Recents — Recently accessed documents. Like shortcuts, recents have an All / Project scope toggle, defaulting to Project. Items from other projects show a [ProjectName] badge. The context menu on recent items includes Remove from Recents, Clear This Project's Recents, and Clear All Recents. The list is shared with the other desktop views.

Selecting a file in the folder tree counts as recent use, including the single-click preview path; opening it also counts. Recents update on their own — the toolbar Refresh action is not required.

Tags — A hierarchical tree of document tags. System-generated tags are filtered out, showing only tags you created. Clicking a tag filters the content area to documents carrying it.

Folders — The physical file and folder structure of the project on disk, enumerated recursively. Hidden folders (starting with .), bin, obj, node_modules, and dist are excluded. The _captured folder has special handling described below.

Tool Library — Agent tools organized into folders you create. The section header has a New Folder action and a Refresh button.

Automations — Deployed automation scripts from the current project's .fire/automations folder.

Trash — Files and folders deleted from the active project, newest first. Rows do not open on click. Restore, Reveal in Explorer, Delete Permanently, and Empty Trash are available from the right-click menu.

Section expand and collapse state is saved per folder. Custom filter tabs can limit which sections are visible.

Pin project documents and folders

In Project Navigator, right-click a project document or folder and choose Pin. The item remains in the project's Pinned section regardless of which physical folder you are browsing. Pinning adds a project navigation reference; it does not move or copy the source item. Use Unpin from the pinned item's menu when it no longer needs to stay close.

Pinned items belong to the current project. Use a Shortcut when you need a broader navigation link or want the same reference available while viewing other projects.

Use Shortcuts and choose their scope

A Shortcut is a global navigation reference that can point to a document, folder, tag, workspace, or automation. Use Add to Shortcuts from the target's menu. In the Shortcuts section, choose All to show shortcuts across projects or Project to show only shortcuts associated with the project currently displayed in the tree.

Changing the scope only filters the visible Shortcut list. It does not delete or recreate any shortcuts. Opening a Shortcut to another project can ask you to switch the active project. Choosing All only changes the list; it does not switch projects.

View Styles

The tree supports three visual styles, cycled by a toolbar button:

Classic — The default. Flat rows with no card borders or backgrounds, tight spacing, and the smallest text. No drag handles or hover action buttons. The most compact view.

Compact — Bordered section cards with tighter padding and single-line rows. Shows heatmap accent bars but no drag handles or hover buttons.

Modern — Full card treatment with rounded borders and card backgrounds. Two-line file rows showing name plus size and extension. Shows drag handles, hover action buttons, and heatmap accent bars. The richest visual mode.

The active view style is saved and restored on next launch.

The toolbar sits above the tree and provides:

Project dropdown — Switch the active project. Projects with a group assignment show as Group > Name. Switching projects reloads the entire tree.

Project options ("...") — Choose Set Group… or Change Group… to group the active project with related projects. This button does not browse another project. Use the project dropdown to switch projects.

Root button — Selects the project root folder in the content area.

Refresh button — Rebuilds the tree from disk and the search index.

View mode button — Cycles through Modern, Compact, and Classic styles.

Display settings button — Opens a flyout with heatmap and focus mode controls.

Activity Heatmap

The heatmap visualizes file modification activity as colored bars along the right edge of tree rows. Files modified within the selected time window get a score based on recency, normalized against the most active item in the tree. Folders show the cumulative activity of their contents.

The gradient runs from indigo (low activity) through blue and amber to red (high activity). In Modern and Compact view styles, folders also show a subtle background wash matching their activity score.

Time windows are configurable from the display settings flyout:

Last 7 days
Last 30 days (default)
Last 90 days
Custom date

The heatmap uses file last-write timestamps from the filesystem, not application access logs. It can be toggled on or off from the settings flyout, and the choice is saved.

Focus Mode

Focus mode dims branches outside the currently selected folder's subtree, reducing visual noise when working in a specific area of the project.

When enabled, selecting a folder sets the focus to that folder's branch. The focused folder, its ancestors, and its descendants stay at full opacity. Other branches are dimmed. Selecting the same folder again or clicking Clear Current Focus in the settings flyout removes the focus. Turning focus mode off clears focus immediately.

Focus mode is off by default and is enabled from the display settings flyout. The choice is saved.

Selecting and Opening

For files, a plain single click selects the document and shows it in the Project Navigator content area. A double click or explicit Open action creates an editor tab. If a text file exists on disk but has not been indexed yet, the single-click path indexes it first and then selects it. This keeps files copied in from Explorer or created by an external tool consistent with already indexed files.

The tree supports multi-selection across all sections:

Plain click — Clears the current selection and selects only the clicked row.

Ctrl+click — Toggles the clicked row in or out of the current selection without affecting other selected items.

Shift+click — Selects a contiguous range from the last clicked row to the current row, spanning across sections if needed.

Selected rows are highlighted with a background tint and a primary color border. Multi-selection applies to drag-and-drop (all selected items move together), delete operations, and Copy/Move to Project actions. Trash rows can be selected but are excluded from dragging and multi-select delete.

Hover Action Buttons

In Modern view style, hovering a row reveals inline action buttons on the right side.

On general folders: New Subfolder and New Document, which creates a Markdown file.

On non-root, non-captured folders: also Rename and Delete.

On the _captured folder, when the Chrome extension is connected: New Forge Doc, Capture Page, and Capture Image.

On files: Pin (toggle) and Clipboard (add to Smart Clipboard).

Compact and Classic view styles do not show hover buttons. All the same actions remain available through right-click context menus.

Context Menus

Right-clicking any item opens a context menu tailored to the item type.

Files

Open, Pin or Unpin, Add to Shortcuts, Reveal in Explorer, Copy, Copy Content for supported text files, Copy Path, Paste, Paste and Rename, Smart Clipboard paste actions, Rename, Delete, Copy to Project, Move to Project, Run Tool, and Create Forge Doc from File when the Chrome extension is connected.

Folders

New Subfolder, New Markdown, Other Document Types, Use for Today's Notes, Paste, Paste and Rename, Smart Clipboard paste actions, Pin, Add to Shortcuts, Copy, Reveal in Explorer, Copy Path, Rename, Delete, Copy to Project, Move to Project, Set Color or Change Color, and Tools.

Tools lists the Tool and Automation placements attached to that project folder. Select a listed placement to run it with the folder as its primary input.

Choose Attach Tool... to add another Tool or Automation to the folder's shared list. Choose Manage Folder Tools... to open the complete manager. For each attached Tool, the manager provides:

Run — start an enabled Tool with the attached folder as input.
Context — configure its saved input, reference, and output context.
Triggers... — add or manage schedules, and file watches that run when a file is added, modified, or deleted.
↑ and ↓ — change the order used wherever this folder's Tools are shown.
Disable or Enable — change whether the Tool is available from linked surfaces. Disabling it also prevents its triggers from running without deleting their individual settings.
Remove — detach the Tool after selecting Remove a second time to confirm. The reusable Tool is not deleted.

For a file watch, the attached folder is the default watched folder. You can choose another folder from the current project or drag exactly one physical folder from Folder Tree onto the selector. Use attached folder restores the default. Changing the watched folder does not move the Tool placement or alter its saved context. Existing triggers can be paused, resumed, or removed.

Folder Tool changes are shared by Project Navigator, Power Strip Folder commands, and Project Map nodes linked to the same folder.

The project root folder has the same menu except Rename, Delete, and Use for Today's Notes are removed. The _captured folder removes New Subfolder, Rename, Delete, and Copy/Move to Project, adds New Forge Doc when the extension is available, and can be selected for Today's Notes.

Workspaces

Open, Rename, Delete, Add to Shortcuts.

Agents

Select Tool, Move to Folder, Archive, Delete.

Agent Folders

New Subfolder, Rename, Delete.

Shortcuts

The full menu of the shortcut's target, plus Place in Folder (puts the shortcut inside the currently selected folder) and Remove from Shortcuts. If the shortcut has already been placed in a folder, Remove from This Folder is also available.

Pinned Items

Delegates to the target's file or folder menu, with Unpin replacing Pin.

Recents

The full file menu plus Remove from Recents, Clear This Project's Recents, and Clear All Recents.

Trash Items

Restore returns the item to its original folder, recreating a missing parent and choosing a unique name rather than overwriting an existing item. Reveal in Explorer opens the stored copy. Delete Permanently removes one entry and Empty Trash clears the project trash; both require confirmation. If Trash cannot determine an item's original location, it cannot restore that item. You can still delete it permanently.

Smart Clipboard Items

Edit Clipboard Item (opens the Clipboard Composer, when enabled), Open, Open as Note (saves as Markdown in _captured), Copy to System Clipboard, Reveal, Copy Path, Save to selected folder, and Remove.

New Documents and Folders

The folder menu provides New Markdown directly. Other Document Types contains HTML (.html), JSON (.json), CSV (.csv), and plain text (.txt). The hover action continues to create Markdown directly. New files are named "Untitled" with a numeric suffix if needed, and open immediately.

New Subfolder and New Folder open a small dialog with a name field. Enter submits, Escape cancels.

Paste Operations

Paste reads the system clipboard and saves its contents into the target folder. Files, images, and text are all handled.

Paste and Rename does the same, then immediately opens a rename dialog on the created file so you can name it without a second step.

Both folder and file context menus include paste actions. On files, the paste target is the file's parent folder. A Smart Clipboard section also shows recent clipboard items. Its Paste All action currently copies only the newest item; paste individual items when you need several.

Copy and Move to Project

Files and folders can be copied or moved to other projects. These actions appear in context menus only when other projects exist.

Selecting either action opens a project picker. For copies, files land in the target project's _captured folder. Folders are copied to the project root with a unique name if needed.

For moves, ThinkForge copies first, verifies all copies succeeded, then moves the originals to the system trash. Multi-select is supported — if the right-clicked item is part of a selection, all selected paths transfer.

Drag and Drop

The tree supports internal drag-and-drop for reorganizing files and folders. Dragging a file or folder onto another folder moves it on disk and updates the search index. If the dragged item is part of a multi-selection, all selected items move together.

Drop targets validate the operation: you cannot drop into the _captured folder, and a folder cannot be dropped into its own subtree.

In Modern view, a drag handle appears on rows. A drag ghost with a count badge follows the cursor during multi-item drags.

When the tree is hosted in the Floating Navigator, files can be dragged out to external applications. Smart Clipboard items can also be dragged out as temporary files or text.

Search results support drag-out of file paths for use in other applications. A current-project result dropped on a Project Map background becomes a generation source; dropping it on a node creates a node attachment. The project file is not moved or copied.

Trash rows are not draggable.

Use Copy to Project or Move to Project for cross-project transfers.

Folder Colors

Folders can be assigned a custom color through Set Color / Change Color in the context menu. The selected color replaces the default folder icon color for that folder throughout the tree. Colors are saved per folder.

Filter Tabs

Above the tree, a tab strip shows two built-in tabs — Folders (the main tree) and Search (the search panel) — plus any filter tabs you create.

The + button creates a new filter tab. Each filter tab selects which sections to display, starting with Recents only. A dropdown on the tab lets you toggle sections on and off. Available sections are Recents, Pinned, Shortcuts, Workspaces, Agents, Automations, Tags, and Smart Clipboard. Folders and Trash cannot be added to filter tabs. At least one section must remain selected.

Right-clicking a filter tab offers Remove. Filter tab definitions are saved with the project.

Search Tab

The Search tab replaces the tree with a dedicated search panel. It combines three search modes that can be toggled independently:

Keyword — Matches against filenames and paths using flexible text matching. Results score 1.0.

Smart — Semantic similarity search. Returns the top 10 hits ranked by similarity, with scores shown as percentages. Scores at or above 70% are highlighted in green.

Tag — Exact tag match, case-insensitive. Results score 1.0.

All three modes are enabled by default. Results are deduplicated and sorted by score descending, capped at 50 results. The minimum query length is 2 characters.

Below the search box, matching tag chips appear as suggestions, up to 12, alphabetically sorted. Clicking a tag chip sets the search text to that tag name, triggering an exact tag search.

Each result row shows the document name, relative path, a mode badge (kw, SK, or tag), and a score percentage for semantic results. Hovering shows a tooltip with a content preview.

Single-clicking a result selects the document. Double-clicking opens it in an editor tab. Right-clicking offers Open, Pin toggle, Add to Smart Clipboard, Reveal in Explorer, and Copy Path. Results can be dragged out as file paths or dropped onto a Project Map as described above.

The _captured Folder

The _captured folder is a special directory for content captured from external sources — web pages, screenshots, extension captures. It has restricted behavior throughout the tree:

Files and folders cannot be dropped into it
It cannot be renamed, deleted, or moved
New subfolders cannot be created inside it
It cannot be copied or moved to another project
The folder itself is not draggable
Subfolder counts are not displayed, only file counts

When the Chrome extension is connected, the _captured folder gains hover buttons and context menu actions for creating Forge Docs, capturing pages, and capturing images.

Files copied to another project via Copy to Project land in the target project's _captured folder by default.

Rich Tooltips

Hovering over items shows tooltips with content previews. Text files show a truncated preview of their contents. Image files show a thumbnail. Folders show the path and item count. Smart Clipboard items show type-specific previews with labels for URLs, file paths, and content types.

Tree State

The tree remembers which folders are expanded, the currently selected path, and the vertical scroll position.

In Project Navigator, each tab maintains its own tree state. Switching between tabs restores the tree to exactly where it was — same folders expanded, same selection, same scroll position.

Settings

The following are saved per project:

View mode — Modern, Compact, or Classic. Default: Classic.

Recents scope — All projects or current project only. Default: current project.

Shortcuts scope — All projects or current project only. Default: all projects.

Heatmap enabled — Whether activity heatmap bars are shown. Default: on.

Heatmap window — Time range for activity scoring. Default: 30 days.

Focus mode enabled — Whether branch dimming is active. Default: off.

Folder expand states, folder colors, and filter tab definitions are also saved with the project.

Where the Folder Tree Appears

Project Navigator — Full-featured, all sections enabled, per-tab tree state. The primary host.

Floating Navigator — Full-featured, with drag-out to other applications enabled. Wraps the tree in a detached floating window.

Tools page — A sidebar for project content.

Automations — The same collapsible sidebar column beside the automation canvas. Documents and tools can be dragged from it onto the selected automation.

Tool picker — Shows the Tool Library for choosing a Tool.

Chrome Extension Side Panel — Full tree with a document action bar.