Weekly Review

The Weekly Review is a card-based interface that helps you process notes that need attention. It surfaces forgotten inbox items and aging background notes, then lets you decide what to do with each one — keep, archive, skip, or delete. Five to ten minutes a week keeps your vault healthy and your mind clear.

How it works

When you open the Weekly Review, Ariv identifies notes that need your attention:

• Inbox notes — Captures and quick notes that were never processed.
• Background notes — Notes untouched for 30 or more days.

Each note is presented as a card showing a preview of its content. You work through the deck one card at a time, choosing an action for each.

Actions

For each note card, you have four options:

Action	Keyboard	Gesture	What happens
Keep Active	Right arrow →	Swipe right	The note stays in your active workflow. Its “last modified” timestamp is updated so it won’t surface again soon.
Archive	Left arrow ←	Swipe left	The note is moved to your archive or reference area. It’s preserved but out of your active view.
Skip	Up arrow ↑	Swipe up	The note is skipped for now. It will appear again in your next weekly review.
Delete	Down arrow ↓	Swipe down	The note is deleted. Use this for captures that are no longer relevant or duplicates.

Caution

Delete is permanent. If you’re unsure about a note, use Archive instead. Archived notes are still searchable and accessible — they’re just out of your daily workflow.

Keyboard-driven processing

The Weekly Review is designed for rapid, keyboard-driven decision-making. Once you’re in the flow:

1. Read the card preview.
2. Press an arrow key to take action.
3. The next card appears immediately.

There’s no need to click anything. You can process dozens of notes in a few minutes once you get into the rhythm.

Tip

Don’t overthink each card. The goal is quick triage, not deep analysis. If a note needs more thought, press ↑ to skip it and come back later.

Swipe gestures

If you’re using a trackpad, you can swipe in the corresponding direction instead of pressing arrow keys:

• Swipe right to keep active
• Swipe left to archive
• Swipe up to skip
• Swipe down to delete

This makes the review feel natural and fluid, especially on a laptop.

Framework-aware labels

If you’ve configured a note-taking framework in Ariv, the Weekly Review adapts its terminology to match:

Framework	”Keep Active” label	”Archive” label
Default	Keep Active	Archive
PARA	Move to Projects/Areas	Move to Resources/Archives
GTD	Next Actions	Reference
Zettelkasten	Keep in Slip-box	Move to Reference

This means the actions feel natural regardless of which methodology you follow. The underlying behavior is the same — only the labels change.

Statistics

As you work through the review, Ariv tracks your progress:

• Notes processed — How many cards you’ve worked through in this session.
• Actions taken — A breakdown of how many notes you kept, archived, skipped, and deleted.

This gives you a sense of completion and helps you understand your vault’s trends over time.

Building the habit

The Weekly Review works best as a regular practice. Here are some approaches:

Sunday evening reset

Spend 5-10 minutes before the new week clearing out your vault. Archive what’s done, delete what’s irrelevant, and keep active what you’re still working on. Start Monday with a clean slate.

Friday wind-down

End the work week by processing accumulated captures. It’s a satisfying way to close out the week and ensure nothing important slips through the cracks.

Daily mini-review

If weekly feels too infrequent, do a quick 2-minute review daily. Fewer cards will surface each time, making it even faster.

Note

There’s no “right” schedule. The important thing is consistency. Even a quick review every two weeks is better than never reviewing at all.

Why it matters

Without periodic review, vaults tend to accumulate clutter. Inbox notes pile up, background notes become invisible, and the signal-to-noise ratio drops. Over time, this makes your vault less useful — search results get noisier, the Dashboard becomes less actionable, and Ask Brain has more irrelevant context to sift through.

The Weekly Review is the antidote. A few minutes of intentional triage keeps your vault lean, your search results sharp, and your AI answers accurate.

---

Related: Dashboard — See your vault’s lifecycle breakdown at a glance | Ask Brain — A clean vault means better AI answers