---
audience: everyone
summary: Rooms are conversations; notes are documents. ScaiWave gives both first-class
  treatment so you don't have to context-switch tools.
title: Rooms vs. notes
path: concepts/rooms-vs-notes
status: published
---

# Rooms vs. notes

ScaiWave gives both surfaces first-class treatment, but they're for
different things. Picking the right one is the difference between a
useful work surface and a frustrating one.

## The short version

| | Room | Note |
|---|---|---|
| **Optimised for** | Conversations | Documents |
| **Lifecycle** | Live, ephemeral, threaded | Durable, edited over time |
| **Authoring** | Sequential messages | One body, evolving |
| **Co-presence** | Members see each other live, type indicators | Live multi-cursor collaboration |
| **Addressable units** | Each event has an ID | Whole-note URL + heading anchors + `^block-id` |
| **AI behaviour** | Engages on demand, streams replies | Organises, links, summarises, finds related |
| **History** | Append-only, redact-on-request | Versioned via Yjs CRDT |
| **Search** | "Find that thing someone said about X" | "Find documents about X" |

## Use a room when

- You're talking *to* someone (or to an AI as if it were someone).
- The artefact is the conversation itself: decisions, banter, async
  back-and-forth, debugging.
- You want notifications, presence, calls, and live typing.
- The content is dated — it's about something happening *now*.

## Use a note when

- You're producing a durable artefact: a runbook, a doc, a list, a
  plan, meeting minutes.
- You expect to edit it over time, share it as a link, and have other
  people contribute later.
- The content needs structure — headings, todos, math, embedded
  references to other documents.
- You want to use `[[wiki links]]` and watch the graph grow.

## "I want both"

You usually do.

- **Save a message as a note** — any message can be promoted with one
  click. The note keeps a back-reference to the source room.
- **Reference a note in a room** — paste `[[Note Title]]` in the
  composer; it renders as a clickable link.
- **AI generates a note from a conversation** — `/note` slash command,
  or ask the AI: *"Write that up as a note in the engineering
  workspace."*
- **Conversation about a note** — the note's comment thread is a
  lightweight room scoped to that document.
- **Todos that span both** — checkbox lines in any note (`- [ ] foo`)
  show up in the cross-workspace Today view, and the AI can update them
  via tool calls.

## Common mistakes

- **Treating a room as a doc**: writing a long, structured "spec"
  inline in a room. After a few replies it's unreadable. Promote it to
  a note immediately.
- **Treating a note as a chat**: appending one-line updates to a
  shared note instead of using a room. The note's revision history
  becomes a log; co-authors miss live notifications.

## Where to go next

- [Tutorials: Create and organise notes](/docs/scaiwave/tutorials/first-steps/create-and-organize-notes).
- [Concepts: AI engagement](/docs/scaiwave/concepts/ai-engagement).
- [Concepts: Search](/docs/scaiwave/concepts/search).