Context Settings

Context settings control what information the AI receives about your project. This is the most important section -- getting context right is the key to useful AI assistance.

Session Memory

margin remembers your recent conversation turns (questions and AI responses) to keep the discussion coherent.

• Max History Depth: Set between 1 and 10 turns. A higher number gives the AI more context but uses more tokens. The default of 5 works well for most conversations.

Include Document Structure

When enabled, the AI receives a structural outline (paragraph previews) of your active document. This helps the Planner understand the broader story flow, but consumes more tokens.

Consider turning this off if you're using a smaller local model. The outline can consume a significant portion of your context window.

Additional Context

Write any extra instructions that should be prepended to every AI request. This is useful for persistent preferences:

Always use British spelling.
Avoid passive voice.
Keep paragraphs under 4 sentences.

These instructions are added automatically to the Writer and Chat agents. The Planner intentionally does not receive them.

Reference Files

The Reference Files panel lets you control which files in your workspace the AI can read. Each file has three states:

State	Icon	Behavior
Available (default)		The Planner can read this file if it decides the content is relevant.
Pinned		This file is always included in every AI request. Good for style guides or world-building rules.
Blocked		The AI is prevented from reading this file. Useful when smaller models struggle with too much context.

Click a file's icon to cycle through the states.

You can also block an entire folder -- all files within it become inaccessible to the AI. Blocked folders are shown with a red strikethrough in the panel.