The Smart Outline reads your conversation after every AI reply and builds a navigable tree in the side panel. Each of your messages becomes a top-level entry, and any Markdown headings inside the AI’s response become nested entries beneath it. The longer the conversation, the more value the outline adds.
How the outline is built
Every time the AI finishes a reply, Ophel scans the page and produces a tree from two sources:
- Your questions — each user message becomes a first-level entry
- AI response headings — Markdown headings (
#, ##, ###, etc.) inside AI replies appear as nested children under the question that triggered them
You: Explain React core concepts
├── # React Introduction
│ ├── ## What is React
│ └── ## Why use React
├── # Core Concepts
│ ├── ## Components
│ ├── ## Props and State
│ └── ## Lifecycle
└── # Summary
| Button | What it shows |
|---|
| Questions toggle | Shows or hides your messages as outline entries — useful for reviewing the conversation flow |
| Bookmarks only | Shows only entries you have starred |
| / Expand / collapse all | Expands or collapses the visible outline tree |
| Copy outline | Copies a Markdown outline for the current source |
| Locate current position | Scrolls the outline panel back to the item matching your current reading position |
| / Scroll top / bottom | Jumps within the outline list without moving the conversation page |
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|
| Toggle user questions on/off |
| Show only user questions (collapse to level 0) |
| Toggle bookmarks filter |
Bookmarks
Hover over any outline entry to reveal the star icon. Click it to bookmark that heading. Bookmarks persist across page reloads.
If a bookmarked heading disappears from the conversation — for example, when
the AI regenerates a response — it becomes a ghost bookmark. Open the
Toolbox and
select
Clear Invalid Bookmarks to remove stale ghost bookmarks.
Expand by level
You can expand the tree to a specific heading depth without manually clicking every node.
Right-click any outline node
A context menu appears with expand-to-level options.
Choose a depth, or use a keyboard shortcut
Press through to expand to heading levels 1–6 directly.
Word count on hover
Hover over any outline entry to see a small tooltip showing the approximate character count of that section. This gives you a quick sense of how long an AI response or section is before you navigate to it.
Copy node text
Outline entries show a copy icon on hover. Click it to copy that node’s text to your clipboard — handy for re-asking a question in a new conversation or saving a heading to notes.
Copy full outline
Click the Copy outline button in the Outline toolbar to copy a structured Markdown outline for the current source. For conversations, the copy follows the current user-question toggle and heading level. For document outlines, it follows the visible outline tree. For virtualized long conversations, Ophel loads the full history first, then restores the page position when it finishes.
Document outline sources
On platforms that expose a separate document panel — such as Claude’s right-side document panel or Gemini’s Deep Research report — the outline header shows a Chat / Document source switch. When you select Document, the outline tree reflects the document’s heading structure instead of the conversation’s, letting you navigate the report independently from the chat thread.
Shortcuts
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|
| Refresh outline |
| Expand / collapse all |
| Toggle user questions on/off |
| Show only user questions (collapse to level 0) |
| Toggle bookmarks filter |
| Locate current position in outline |
| Search within outline |
| Jump to previous heading |
| Jump to next heading |
| - | Expand outline to heading level 1–6 |
Settings
Go to Settings → Features → Outline to configure the outline’s behavior.
| Setting | Description |
|---|
| Auto update | Whether the outline refreshes automatically after each AI reply |
| Update interval | How often Ophel checks for changes (seconds) |
| Follow mode | Whether the outline tracks your scroll position: current, latest, or manual |
| Inline bookmark icon | When to show the bookmark star inside the conversation text itself |
| Panel bookmark icon | When to show the bookmark star in the outline panel entries |
| Show word count | Show character count tooltip on hover |
| Prevent auto-scroll | Stop the outline panel from scrolling itself when you navigate |
