Single-Click Summaries | Pieces Docs

Generate instant, contextual summaries from your workflow using preset summary types in Pieces Desktop.

Overview

Single-Click Summaries are quick-access actions prominently displayed when you first open the Pieces Desktop App. These summaries generate instant, contextual insights from your workflow captured by the Long-Term Memory (LTM-2.7) Engine.

Each summary type adapts dynamically to your workflow, meaning the same summary type generates different results based on your current activities, captured memories, and work patterns. This makes Single-Click Summaries powerful tools for understanding your productivity, tracking progress, and identifying patterns in your work.

Generating Summaries

Click any summary card on the homepage and after a few minutes, you'll see your summary in the Pieces Timeline.

You can run several Single-Click Summaries at once. Start a *Day Recap*, *Standup Update*, and *Meeting Prep* together and let them generate side by side. You no longer need to wait for one to finish before starting the next.

Viewing Queued Summaries

When you generate a summary, it appears under the current day in Pieces Timeline with a "Queued" or generating status. Expand the day section to track progress. The Timeline stays responsive while summaries generate, so you can keep scrolling and reading even with several in flight.

Click `Show Timeline` in the top left of the main view to expand Pieces Timeline if it's not already open. Click on the current day section to expand it and view all summaries, timeline activities, and other events for that day. Queued summaries appear with a "Queued" status indicator showing their position in the queue (e.g., "Queued (#3)", "Next in queue"). Timeline with queued Single-Click Summaries for the current day

Pieces Timeline showing current day expanded with queued summaries visible

Canceling a Summary

Locate the summary you want to cancel under the current day in Pieces Timeline and click the red cancel button (hovering shows Stop Generating).

Viewing Completed Summaries

When a summary finishes generating, it remains in the day section where it was queued. Click it to view detailed insights, related activities, and artifacts from your workflow.

Summaries are based on memories from a given time frame—not a guess from whatever was on screen. Those memories can include vision, audio, clipboard activity, browser URLs you visited, files you opened, and people you collaborated with. A completed summary usually includes a high-level overview of that context plus people, URLs, files, next steps, and tasks. Files and sites cited in a summary are clickable, so you can open them directly.

Completed summary with insights, related activities, and document links

Completed summary view showing full results with insights, related activities, and links to relevant documents

People, Tags & Files

Pieces detects people mentioned in your workstream and people you have collaborated with, then turns each name in a summary into a rich, hoverable reference. Hover any name to open a persona card showing who they are, how to reach them, their role, and how you two have worked together over time.

Tags and files/folders in summaries work the same way: live references instead of plain text.

This is especially useful when:

  • A summary mentions someone you've met once and can't quite place
  • You're walking into a meeting and want context on an attendee without leaving the page
  • You need to recall what you and a teammate last decided together

Explore Single-Click Summaries

Browse all built-in summary types—Day Recap, Standup Update, Time Breakdown, AI Habits, and more. Create custom summaries with specific time ranges, save reusable templates, and request new summary types. Schedule summaries to run automatically—daily or on specific days of the week.