Record Types and Parser Control
Meet the three fundamental entities and learn to take manual control of processing.
Lida is built on the pillars of agility, aiming to empty your mind in a structured way. So that your brain works as a processor and not as a storage drive, every captured thought must be converted into one of the three entities below.
📐 The Three Building Blocks
Mixing habits, commitments, and loose ideas in the same list creates visual overload and paralysis. By forcing categorization into three entities (Tasks, Events, and Notes), Lida helps your brain separate what requires immediate action from what is merely context.
🟢 1. Tasks
Action-focused records. Elements that need to be executed, completed, or managed over time.
- Prefix: None (this is Lida's default behavior).
- Behavior: Displays a checkbox in the Daily Log and directly impacts your daily progress bar.
🔵 2. Events
Occurrences tied to a fixed point in time. Events are not "completed", they simply happen.
- Trigger Prefixes:
>or/ - Example:
/ Marketing team alignment at 10am - Behavior: Does not have a checkbox. If the day has passed, the event is considered done. Events with financial values (e.g.,
> Pay internet $120) are interpreted by the AI as scheduled debits.
🟡 3. Notes
Information, ideas, insights, or facts for future reference. They don't have a due date and don't require immediate action. Not considered by financial control.
- Trigger Prefixes:
-or* - Example:
- The new router password is lida2026 - Behavior: They serve as context records. They are the most valuable data for the AI's Long-Term Memory, as they help the app understand your behavior, insights, and life history.
🛑 Taking Manual Control (AI Bypass)
Lida's natural language intelligence is proactive, but there are times when you want the text to be saved exactly as it was written, without the engine trying to extract dates, times, or change the item's type.
To temporarily disable smart processing, you have two escape tools:
Method A: Double Prefixes
Doubling the initial character forces the record's type and completely turns off the NLP engine for the rest of the sentence:
| Command | Practical Result |
|---|---|
!! | Forces the item to be a Task and disables the parser. |
// | Forces the item to be an Event and disables the parser. |
-- | Forces the item to be a Note and disables the parser. |
Example: // Send email in 2 days will create a pure event for today with the text intact, preventing Lida from trying to schedule the item for two days from now.
Method B: The Initial Space Trick
If you insert a single space before any character when typing your note (e.g., - Study anatomy), Lida will understand the command as a "text preservation" order. The parser is canceled and the text is saved in its raw form.
Practical Usage Tip