What Your AI Can Do

When you connect Symbol to an AI like Claude, your AI gains a set of tools it can use on your behalf. You never call these tools yourself. Instead, you just talk to your AI naturally: "save this," "search for Docker issues," "load my Solutions." The AI picks the right tool and runs it for you.

Here is what each tool does.

Finding your knowledgeCopy Anchor Link

List capsules: Browse all your capsules, or narrow the list by type, tag, category, project, whether they are Skills or still unfinished, and by when they were created, last updated, or archived (a rolling window like the last eight hours, a named period like this week resolved in your timezone, or an exact date range), and choose the order. Within one type you can also filter, order, and total by the fields on your capsules (for example deals in the "won" stage, sorted by amount, with the pipeline summed), including capsules whose field is any of several values (for example deals in either the "won" or the "lead" stage) in one request. Filtering on a reference field matches by the capsule the value points to, so "grants whose action is @menu/change" finds every grant pointing at that capsule however the reference was written, and still works after its alias is renamed. Your AI can also ask for only the titles, summaries or a few field values of each capsule instead of the whole capsule, so a quick look across a large type stays small and fits in one reply. Ask for a choice that none of your capsules use and is not one of the field's options, and you are told the valid choices instead of getting an empty list. When a field holds a scope written as a pattern, you can ask which records apply to one thing: a rule stored as GravityKit/* is found by asking about GravityKit/GravityView, with the most specific rule first. It can also list what other people shared with you by name instead of your own library. Try asking your AI: "Show me everything in my shopping list from the last eight hours," "What is my open pipeline?" or "What has been shared with me?"

Search: Search across your entire knowledge base by keyword and type, and narrow by when capsules were created or last updated using the same words the rest of the app uses (a rolling window like the last eight hours, a named period like this week resolved in your timezone, or an exact range). Try: "Search for anything about authentication errors from this week."

Open a capsule: Open a specific capsule by its reference, like @docker/3. Your AI does this automatically when you mention a capsule by name or reference. An archived capsule opens too, marked as archived, with a note that it can be restored from Archive in the web app.

Load a full type: Pull a type's capsules into the conversation in bulk, so your AI has the picture before you start. You can narrow to a creation window (a rolling span, a named period in your timezone, or an exact range). Large types arrive a page at a time. When the type has an output template, your AI sees it too, so it knows that a capsule with no body of its own shows the template, and each capsule arrives with its body as you would read it, template and field values filled in. Try: "Load all my Docker fixes before we begin."

Load a project: Load a project's capsules across every type in one go, and narrow by when they were created or last updated the same way the main listing can. Again a page at a time if there are many. Useful when a project spans multiple categories.

Search public content: Search what creators have published on Discover, not your own library. Narrow by category or tag, and sort by newest or most popular, exactly as the Discover page does: the same search returns the same entries in the same order, each with its public page link, its creator and its like, save and view counts. Only content its owner made Public appears, never link-only, team or private content. Try: "Find popular public prompts about cover letters."

Resolve several references at once: When one message mentions two or more capsules or types, your AI fetches them all in a single step instead of one at a time. Try: "Compare @clients/1 and @clients/2."

Saving and editingCopy Anchor Link

Save a capsule: Save a new capsule to your knowledge base at any point in a conversation. Just say "save this" or "add this to my Solutions." When your AI writes a prompt with blanks like {{platform}}, it can describe each blank and mark the ones the prompt cannot run without, so anyone whose assistant uses the prompt later is asked the right question. When the type has an output template and your AI sends no body, the capsule shows the template filled in with its field values. An empty body on such a type is refused rather than saved, so a capsule never loses its template by accident; to keep a capsule deliberately blank, use "Start blank" in the web app, or send authored_blank: true through the API. To show an attached picture or file in the body, your AI writes its file name, like ![chart](chart.png), in the same request, or pastes the embed_markdown from the upload reply; Symbol stores a link that keeps working for everyone who can read the capsule, including on share pages. The image_url and download_url in a reply expire within an hour, so a body never stores them: Symbol rewrites your own capsule's links and refuses another capsule's. On an encrypted capsule the body is never rewritten, so your AI pastes the embed_markdown itself. An alias that belonged to a deleted capsule stays reserved: a capsule saved with it is saved without the alias, and your AI says so. Ask it to reclaim the alias to reuse it on purpose. Mentions written before the deletion stay unresolved, so they never point to the new capsule.

Rewrite a capsule: Replace the title or the body of an existing capsule. Try: "Update @docker/3 with this new approach." When the type has an output template, your AI can also hand the capsule back to it: the capsule drops its own body and shows the template again, filled in with its field values. Try: "Put @recipes/4 back on its template." An empty body on such a type is refused rather than saved, with a message pointing at the template instead. It also changes who can see a capsule: Private (every link stops working), Anyone with link (you get its link), or Public (listed on your profile, and you get its address). If publishing needs a step first, your AI says which: turning your public profile on, which it can do in the same step once you agree, or claiming a username, a one-time step in Settings. Try: "Make @docker/3 public." A capsule saved before its required fields were known completes itself once an update fills in every required field, and your AI tells you so; from then on, an update that leaves a required field empty is refused instead of quietly dropping the value. Giving a capsule an alias that belonged to a deleted capsule is refused until you ask your AI to reclaim it. An archived capsule can be read but not changed; your AI says so and that you can restore it from Archive in the web app.

Fix one part of a capsule: Change a single line or section without rewriting the whole thing, which keeps the rest of a long capsule exactly as it was. Try: "In @docker/3, change the port from 8080 to 3000."

Delete a capsule: Permanently remove a capsule you no longer need. If other capsules mention it, the first attempt stops and tells you how many and which ones, because their mentions would stop pointing anywhere; nothing is deleted until you confirm. If the capsule owns a log, your AI first tells you which log and how many entries it holds, and deletes only after you confirm; a log that belongs to someone else is kept as its own capsule. The reply also says whether the capsule was deleted for good or moved to the trash.

Duplicate a capsule: Make a copy of a capsule, exactly like Duplicate in the web app. The copy keeps the original's attached files and pictures, and its image and file fields point at the copies, so a template full of attachments copies in one step. The copy counts toward your plan's capsule limit and storage like any new capsule. Try: "Duplicate my weekly-report template."

Create a type: Set up a new type (category) for organizing capsules. Your AI writes the guidance automatically based on the name and what you are saving. When the type gets an output template, every {{field}} and section in it must name one of the type's fields, and every section must be closed; otherwise the type is not created and the reply names what to fix.

Update a type: Rename a type, change its address (slug), rewrite its guidance, or change its icon, colour, and archiving rules. Only what you ask for changes; everything else stays as it was. When the slug changes, links written with the old one keep working. Your AI can also rename a field: every capsule keeps its value under the new name, and the type's template and capsule bodies that show the field keep showing it. Changing how often a log starts a new dated capsule (daily, weekly, monthly or manual) stops first when the log already has dated capsules: your AI tells you how many there are and which capsule today's entries go to now and after the change, because the current period is split between the two. Existing capsules keep their names and entries, and you confirm before the change applies. When a new archiving rule would archive capsules right away, your AI tells you how many, and how many share links would pause, and applies it only after you confirm. Try: "Change my Solutions guidance to always include the error message," or "Rename the company field on People to employer."

Delete a type: Remove a type you no longer want. If it still holds capsules, the first attempt stops and tells you how many, so nothing disappears by accident, and you decide what happens to the contents. It also stops if deleting the type would affect things elsewhere (capsules that mention the type, other types whose fields point at it, its collections, or its active share links) and lists them, so you can weigh that before confirming. If you choose to move the capsules into another type and that type has a public share link, Symbol pauses first and tells you the move would publish them, so nothing goes public by surprise; you confirm before it proceeds. Moving them also stops first when it changes the capsules themselves: capsules that would render blank or differently because they show this type's template, capsules that leave a required field of the new type empty (they are marked incomplete), and logs that detach. The capsules of a log type cannot be moved into another type. In an organization, a type that other members have capsules in can only be deleted by an owner or Admin: moving takes every member's capsules along, and deleting archives other members' capsules into General instead of deleting them, so they can be restored. A log type that other members have capsules in can't be deleted until they delete theirs.

Send a Decision (send_decision) (experimental): When your AI needs a decision from you, it can send a short structured message to your Inbox instead of a wall of text. Questions are capped at 20 words, and a choice question is answered with a tap. Requires the Experimental features toggle in Settings. Try: "Ask me in my Inbox."

Check for your answer (experimental): After sending you a Decision, your AI checks back to see whether you have replied yet, and reads your answers when you have. This is why an assistant can send a question, keep working, and pick your answer up later.

Withdraw a Decision (experimental): If a question goes unanswered and your AI decides to carry on without you, it retracts the Decision so it stops sitting in your Inbox waiting.

SharingCopy Anchor Link

Share a capsule, a type, a collection, or a project: Get a shareable link. Anyone with the link can view it without needing a Symbol account, and the link is the only way in: it is never listed or indexed. Asking again gives you the same link, so you never pile up links you have lost track of; ask for a new link when you want a separate one. Sharing a whole type or collection creates a browsable library page of the capsules you created in it that your workspace can already see (not encrypted, not archived); a Private or link-only capsule in an organization, or a capsule you keep out of library links, is never published. Sharing a project works the same way: its page lists the project's capsules that the project's owner created, grouped by type, and a project is shared by link only, never listed publicly. Name the project or give its id. Your AI tells you how many capsules the link publishes. You can set an expiry date or a maximum number of views, which always makes a new link. An expiry date must be in the future: one that has already passed is refused, and no link is created.

See who can see it: Ask who can see a capsule, type, collection or project, and which links reach it: whether it is Private, shared by link or Public, its public address, and each live link with its views and expiry. Ask with no item to list every link you have made. Try: "Which of my links are still live?" or "Who can see @docker/3?"

Read a shared capsule: Pull a capsule someone shared with you into your AI, using the link or its token. Any signed-in holder of a working link can read it, and your AI gets the same content the link's page shows. Each read counts against the link's view limit if it has one, so your AI resolves it once and reuses the result. A link to a whole type, collection or project returns the library's name and page link: libraries can't be browsed through an AI yet. If you turned MCP access off for the organization that owns the content, the read is refused.

Revoke a share link: Turn off links you shared so they stop working. Paste the link, or name the item (a capsule, type, collection or project) and revoke every link to it, or one of them, with no URL needed. A public item's listing is not a link you revoke: to unpublish it, make it Anyone with link or Private. Try: "Revoke every link to @docker/3."

Share with specific people: Share a capsule, a type or a collection with named people by email, at view or edit, and see, change or remove who has access. Only those people can open it, from Shared with me. Content in an organization can be shared only with its members, and a viewer member can only view. Try: "Share @recipes/3 with sam@example.com so they can edit it." or "Who has access to my Prompts type?"

CollectionsCopy Anchor Link

Collections group capsules inside a single type, so one broad type can hold several narrower shelves.

List collections: See the collections inside a type. Try: "What collections do I have in Prompts?"

Create, rename, or delete a collection: Set up a new grouping inside a type, rename one, or remove it. Removing a collection does not remove the capsules in it.

Add to a collection: Put one or more capsules into a collection. They must already be in the same type as the collection.

Remove from a collection: Take a capsule out of a collection. The capsule stays in its type.

ProjectsCopy Anchor Link

List your projects: See every project you can access, with names, descriptions, and visibility. Try: "List my projects."

Create a project: Spin up a new project to group capsules across multiple types. You can keep it private (the default) or share it with an organization workspace so teammates can read or edit. Try: "Create a project called Onboarding 2026."

Update a project: Rename a project, change its description or color, or change who can see it. Try: "Rename my Onboarding project to Onboarding 2026 and set the color to teal."

Delete a project: Permanently remove a project. The capsules that were in it stay in your knowledge base. Only the project grouping is removed.

Add to a project: Add one or more existing capsules to a project to group them together.

Remove from a project: Remove a capsule from a project. The capsule itself stays in your knowledge base.

Move to another Type: Move one or more capsules into a different Type when they no longer belong where they are. The capsule keeps its identity, share links and attachments, and any links that pointed at it by its old reference keep working, so you do not have to hunt down and edit the capsules that mention it. If the Type you are moving into has a public share link, Symbol pauses first and tells you the move would publish those capsules on its public page, so private notes never go public by accident; you confirm before it proceeds. A move also tells you what else it changed: collections it dropped the capsule from, required fields of the new type the capsule leaves empty (it is marked incomplete until you fill them in), a log that detaches because the new type keeps no log (the log keeps its entries and reconnects if you move the capsule back), and other types whose fields can only point at the old type, with how many of their capsules cite it. It refuses a move that would mix up encryption, land in a log type, move a log itself, or attach the capsule to a different log type than the one its log lives in.

It can also take your personal capsules into a team: name the organization and a Type in it, and your capsules move there, or copy there if you ask for a copy and want to keep the originals. Symbol first tells you who in the team will be able to read or edit them and which share links keep working, and waits for you to confirm. Old mentions of a moved capsule keep working for anyone who can read it in the team. Try: "Move my onboarding notes into the Engineering Type of Acme."

Edit many capsules at once: Set or clear one field, or add, remove or replace tags, across up to 50 capsules in one go. Ask for a dry run first to see how many would change and which would be skipped. Try: "Set status to done on all my open tasks from last week."

Rename or merge a tag: Rename a tag across every capsule you can edit, or fold it into another tag you already use. Capsules you cannot edit keep their tags.

Import notes: Bring in a CSV file, a folder of Markdown notes (such as an Obsidian vault or a Notion Markdown export), or a Symbol export, as typed capsules. Your AI can preview the plan first: the columns it found, the fields they map to, and any rows that would fail. A reference field that points at a note imported later, even in another Type of the same export, is filled in once that note arrives; one whose note never arrives is listed at the end of the import, and the note it sits in is still imported. A note whose body carries an attachment access link copied from another capsule is not imported and is listed with the reason, while the rest of the notes import.

Load a project: See "Load a project" under Finding your knowledge.

Following the links between capsulesCopy Anchor Link

When one capsule mentions another with a reference like @docker/3, that link is real and your AI can walk it.

What this capsule points to: List the capsules a given capsule references. Try: "What does @runbooks/2 link out to?"

What points at this capsule: List the capsules that reference a given one, so you can see what would be affected before you change it. Try: "What links to @standards/1?"

Map the neighbourhood: Follow the links outward and inward together, up to three hops, to see how a cluster of capsules connects. Try: "Show me everything connected to @onboarding/1."

Find orphans: Find capsules in a type or project that nothing else references. A good way to spot notes that have drifted out of reach, and you can ignore ones you only just made so recent work does not clutter the list. Try: "Which capsules in Prompts are orphaned, ignoring the last three days?"

LogsCopy Anchor Link

Some types are logs: instead of one long document you keep appending dated entries.

Add a log entry: Append one timestamped entry to a log, in a single step that is safe even when something else is writing at the same time. Each call adds a new entry rather than replacing the last one. Logs that keep dated buckets get today's bucket created on the first entry of the period; logs attached to a specific capsule append straight to that capsule's log.

Correct a log entry: Change an entry your AI appended earlier, using the reference it got back when it wrote the entry. The entry keeps its number. Try: "I logged 30 minutes on that, it was 20."

Delete a log entry: Remove one entry. The other entries keep their numbers and references, and the next entry takes the next number.

Read log entries: Read a log's entries newest first, a page at a time, and narrow to when they happened (a rolling span, a named period in your timezone, or an exact range). For a log that files into dated buckets you can read a whole period across its buckets at once, so asking a monthly log for "this week" returns just this week. Try: "What did I log last week?"

Your accountCopy Anchor Link

List types: See all your types with their descriptions and how many capsules each holds. To read a type's AI guidance, your AI loads that one type instead.

List workspaces: See the workspaces you can reach, meaning your personal one plus every organization you belong to. Your AI uses this when you name a workspace, so it saves to the right place. Try: "Which workspaces do I have?"

Stats: Get a quick summary of one workspace: how many capsules it holds, broken down by type. The reply names the workspace it describes. Ask about an organization by name to see its numbers rather than your personal ones. Try: "How many capsules are in my Acme workspace?"

Storage: See how much storage you have used and which files are attached to your capsules.

Delete an attachment: Remove a file attached to a capsule to free up storage space.

Rotate an image: Turn a stored image attachment a quarter turn left or right until it sits the right way up. The correction is saved to the image itself, so it shows up everywhere the picture appears. The reply includes the image's new width and height, so your AI can confirm the turn without downloading the picture.

Everything you liked: List the capsules you liked on share links, public pages and Discover, newest first. Each item says whether you can still open it right now (public, in Symbol, or through the link you liked it on) and links to the creator's current version. Something since made private or revoked shows as no longer available, with no title.

Account info: Check which Symbol account is connected to your AI. On a connection that uses an organization API key it names the organization instead of a person: principal is organization_api_key, organization holds the organization's id and name, and email and member_since are empty. A connection made as a person reports principal as user, along with your username, your public profile address, and whether your public profile is on.

Attaching files from your computerCopy Anchor Link

Installing Symbol Bridge adds three more tools: two that let an assistant read files off your own disk and attach them, and one that reports what the Bridge resolved when something is misconfigured. Turning on end-to-end encryption adds eight more for working with encrypted capsules. All of them are covered on that page.

With the Bridge installed alongside this connector, an assistant reads through the Bridge's local copy on its own while writes keep going here. See When both servers are connected.