Smart Clipboard is a persistent, global clipboard stack that runs independently of any project. It captures everything you copy to the Windows clipboard — text, files, folders, and images — and keeps it in a reusable list. Items stay until you remove them or the stack reaches its 25-item capacity, at which point the oldest item is dropped.
Unlike the operating system clipboard, which holds only the most recent copy, Smart Clipboard keeps a history. You can paste any item back to the system clipboard at any time, drag items into other surfaces, edit them through the Clipboard Composer, or use them as context input for agent execution.
Item Types
Smart Clipboard recognizes four item types.
Text — Plain text copied from any application. The display name comes from the content, using the first line, truncated. Text that looks like a valid file path or URL gets an additional type label in previews.
File — A single file, captured either by copying it in Windows Explorer or by adding it through a context menu in ThinkForge. The item holds the absolute file path.
Folder — A directory path, captured the same way as files. Tooltips show the folder path and how many items are inside.
Image — A bitmap or PNG captured directly from the clipboard, such as a screenshot or an image copied from a web page. The image is saved to disk under clipboard_images/ in the ThinkForge data root, and the display name includes the image dimensions.
How Items Get Added
Automatic capture
A background monitor listens for Windows clipboard changes. Every time the system clipboard changes, it reads the contents and adds the appropriate item.
The monitor checks clipboard formats in priority order: copied files, registered file path formats, PNG image, bitmap, and finally text. The first format that produces a valid capture wins.
For text, the monitor checks whether the content represents file or folder paths. If every line resolves to an existing file or folder, the items are captured individually as files and folders rather than as one text clip.
A short debounce prevents rapid-fire captures when an application writes to the clipboard several times in quick succession.
Automatic capture is Windows-only. It starts with the app and stops on shutdown.
Manual addition
Items can be added manually through context menus in several places:
- Right-click a file or folder in the Project Navigator folder tree and select Add to Smart Clipboard
- Right-click a document in search results
- Right-click a cluster node in Cluster View
- Push content from the Chrome extension
Manual additions both add the item to the stack and write it to the system clipboard, so it is immediately available for Ctrl+V.
Deduplication
Adding an item removes any existing item with the same content. Images are also deduplicated by their content, so the same screenshot captured twice does not create two entries. The most recent copy of any content is always at the top of the stack.
No feedback loop
When Smart Clipboard writes an item back to the system clipboard during a paste, the monitor skips that change. Pasting from Smart Clipboard does not re-add the item to the stack.
Storage
Items are stored globally, not per project, in:
Documents\Think Forge\Databases\smart_clipboard.db
Items persist across application restarts. Image files are stored in clipboard_images/ under the same data root.
Stack Behavior
The stack holds at most 25 items. When a new item is added and the stack is full, the oldest is deleted. Items are displayed newest first.
The stack is not a queue. Pasting an item does not remove it. Items remain until you remove them or the capacity limit pushes them out.
Accessing Smart Clipboard
Global hotkey overlay
Pressing Win+Shift+V opens a lightweight popup at the cursor position showing all items in the stack. Click any item to paste it to the system clipboard and close the overlay. Press Escape or click outside to dismiss.
The hotkey works even when ThinkForge is not the foreground application. Each row shows the type icon, display name, and an inline preview. Hovering shows a fuller preview or an image thumbnail.
You can change or clear this shortcut under Settings → Hotkeys → Smart Clipboard. The field saves immediately. If another application already owns the shortcut, ThinkForge reports the conflict and keeps the previous working shortcut.
The overlay also includes a Paste All button, which pastes the most recently added item — the system clipboard can only hold one item at a time.
Power Strip panel
The Power Strip's Smart Clipboard sidecar shows the same list. Items can be clicked to copy to the system clipboard, right-clicked for context menu actions, or dragged out into other applications.
The panel also accepts drops. Dragging a file or text into it adds it to Smart Clipboard.
Project Navigator folder tree
The folder tree includes a Smart Clipboard section showing clipboard items inline, with drag-and-drop in both directions and a Clear button to empty the stack.
Context menus
The folder tree, its Files menus, folder-tree search results, and the focused document reader use Copy for a native file or folder and Copy Content for document text. ThinkForge saves those copies into Smart Clipboard automatically. Cluster views and the Power Strip use explicit Smart Clipboard wording.
Pasting
Clicking an item writes its contents to the Windows clipboard in its native form:
- Text items paste as text
- File and folder items paste as file drops, so pasting into Explorer or another application performs a file operation
- Image items paste as file drops pointing to the saved image
After the paste, you can immediately Ctrl+V in any application. The item stays in the stack.
Clipboard Composer
The Clipboard Composer opens a clipboard item in a modal editor window, for refining or combining content before using it.
Launch it from the context menu on a clipboard item, using Edit Clipboard Item. It is available for text items and for file items with recognized text-based extensions.
The editor is chosen based on the content:
- Rich text editor — Markdown files, HTML files, and plain text that does not look like code
- Code editor — JSON, JavaScript, TypeScript, C#, Python, SQL, and other code formats, with the language detected from the content or file extension
The composer provides four actions:
- Save as New Clip — Adds the editor content as a new item. The original is not modified.
- Copy Result — Copies the current editor content to the system clipboard without creating a new clip.
- Insert Clip — Opens a picker showing other Smart Clipboard items. Selecting one inserts its text at the cursor.
- Cancel — Closes without saving.
Previews and Tooltips
- Text items show a truncated preview of the content
- File items show a text preview for recognized text formats, or a thumbnail for images
- Folder items show the full path and item count
- Type labels give context — text that looks like a URL is labeled "URL", paths are labeled "File Path" or "Folder Path", and file clips show their friendly type such as "Markdown File" or "PNG Image"
Tooltips load on hover, so content is not built for items you never point at.
Chrome Extension
The Chrome extension can add an item, remove an item by ID, clear the stack, and report how many items it holds. This lets the extension push web content — selected text, URLs, page excerpts — into Smart Clipboard for later use on the desktop.
Agent Integration
Smart Clipboard items can be used as context inputs for agent execution. When an agent step specifies a clipboard source with a specific item ID, that item's content is supplied to the step along with its type, display name, and timestamp.
If no ID is given, the step reports that a specific item ID is required.
Platform Support
The core stack, manual additions, and text paste work anywhere. These features are Windows-only, because they depend on Windows APIs:
- Automatic clipboard capture
- File and folder paste
- Image capture
- The Win+Shift+V global hotkey
Relationship to Other Systems
Smart Clipboard is a standalone global system. It does not belong to any project and does not require a project to be open.
It appears in the folder tree as a section, in Power Strip as a sidecar panel, in Floating Navigator through the shared folder tree, in the Chrome extension, and in the agent system as a context source.
The Clipboard Composer is an add-on and can be turned off without affecting Smart Clipboard's core capture-and-paste behavior.