SillyTavern Timelines Extension

An extension for timeline based navigation of ST chat histories.

Think Loom [1] [2], but built on ST's chat paradigm.

Features

• Display all chats with the current character. Chat messages with the same content are shown as a single node on the timeline.
• Search all current character message content with realtime fulltext filtering.
• Theming based on UI theme or custom theme.
• Branch your chat from any chat or swipe.

Installation and Usage

Installation

Use ST's inbuilt extension installer.

Usage

• Settings: Extensions > Timelines
• Open the timeline view: Extensions > Timelines > View Timeline
• Slash commands:
  • /tl - Open the timeline view (same as pressing the View Timeline button)
  • /tl r - Refresh the timeline graph

For convenient one-click access, bind the /tl command to a custom Quick Reply button. A useful short label is "⏳" (U+23F3, HOURGLASS WITH FLOWING SAND).

• Nodes with swipes appear with a halo around them.
  • There is also a setting to make them subtly larger.
• Checkpoint nodes appear with a colored ring around them.
  • If using the UI theme, the ring is a golden yellow.
  • If using a custom theme, the color is configurable.
• Checkpoint paths are colored accordingly, and are shown in the legend.
  • The checkpoint color is random, but determined from the checkpoint name.
  • A checkpoint is detected only when there is an intact checkpoint link in the chat file that originated the checkpoint. Dead links are ignored.
• The identical content auto-merge only combines messages at the same depth (sequential message number in the chat).
  • Thus the graph is always acyclic, even if you use the same canned Quick Reply at multiple points in the same chat.
  • But chats that use the same Quick Reply at the same depth will all be routed through the node that represents that quick reply at that depth.
  • The same occurs if you send e.g. just "Thanks!", and that happens to be at the same chat depth as an earlier "Thanks!" in some other timeline.

Actions:

• Opening the timeline view auto-zooms to the current chat, and flashes the last node in that chat to clearly show it on the graph.
  • This might not be the latest node on the timeline, if there is another chat that still continues after that point.
  • There is also a button to zoom to the current chat.
• Hovering over a node shows a short preview of the message text, and highlights all of its incoming and outgoing edges.
• Long-pressing a node with swipes reveals the swipes on the graph.
  • The timeline view allows you to see and access swipes also on previous messages, not just the last one.
  • There is also a Toggle swipes button to reveal/hide swipes for the whole graph.
  • There is a setting to Auto-expand Swipes when the timeline view first opens, and when the graph is refreshed.
• Clicking a node opens a full info panel about it.
  • The panel has buttons to go to that message in any of the chats it is part of, or to create a new chat branch starting from that message.
  • On a swipe node, if the swipe is not on the last message in that particular chat timeline, it is not possible to go to the swipe without creating a new branch.
  • In this situation, the button to go to the message is grayed out, but the button to create a branch is available.
• Double-clicking a node goes straight to the message.
  • If the same message appears in multiple chat files, one of them is picked automatically. Usually this picks the most recent chat.
  • When this happens, a notification is shown with the chat file name.
  • If it's not the chat file you wanted, just open the timelines view again, click on the node, and pick the correct chat file explicitly from the full info panel.
  • If you double-click a swipe node, what happens depends on whether it is the last node in that particular chat.
  • On the last node, double-clicking a swipe opens the original chat, goes to the last message, and switches to that swipe.
  • On a non-last node, double-clicking automatically creates a new branch, opens the new chat, goes to the (now-last) message, and switches to that swipe.
• Hovering over an edge highlights that edge.
• Clicking an edge navigates to its far end (as measured from the click position), and zooms into the node there.
• Clicking a legend entry highlights it and zooms into it. Clicking the same entry again removes the highlight, and zooms out.
• Focusing the fulltext search or typing into the fulltext search highlights and zooms to the search results in realtime. When no match, or if you clear the search, it zooms out.
• The fulltext search is an incremental fragment search a.k.a. swoop. For example, the query ear xam oop would match this line (and in this document, only this line).
  • A swoop is an AND search using whitespace-delimited fragments. Their ordering in the query does not matter.
  • Swoop is a highly efficient way to quickly navigate large collections of text, inspired by the HELM Swoop function of the Helm package in Emacs.
  • You can still use the Timelines search like you would a classical substring search (but that's not taking advantage of swoop's full potential).

Hover tooltips describe available actions at any node or edge.

Checkpoints

While checkpoints are a core ST feature, Timelines takes them to center stage, so we explain them briefly here.

A checkpoint is just a named chat branch. Branches, including checkpoints, are essentially separate chat files. You may sometimes see the old term bookmark, which means checkpoint.

Timelines itself only creates (unnamed) branches.

Checkpoints are created in the ST main GUI. To create a checkpoint, go to the chat message you want, and then press the Checkpoint button in the Message Actions for that message. The actions are in the "..." menu, unless you have enabled Expand Message Actions in your User Settings (advanced mode).

To rename a checkpoint, rename the file in a file manager.

To delete a branch or checkpoint, use ST's built-in Manage chat files view, or a file manager. Roughly speaking: delete the chat file that was spawned by the branch or checkpoint, and the branch/checkpoint will be gone.

However, checkpoint tracking complicates things slightly:

• Creating a checkpoint spawns a new chat file (the checkpoint chat file), but it also inserts a checkpoint link into the originating chat file.
  • The link belongs to a specific message. Each chat message can have at most one checkpoint link.
  • As of ST 1.11.3, checkpoint links cannot be deleted in the GUI (but this does not matter much).
• If you later overwrite a checkpoint, by creating a new one at the same message in the same chat, doing so severs the original link.
  • This does not overwrite the old checkpoint chat file. Only the checkpoint link in the originating chat file is overwritten.
• If you delete or rename the checkpoint chat file, this leaves a dead link in the originating chat file.

Timelines tracks checkpoint paths by following checkpoint links, ignoring any dead links. Therefore:

• If you delete or rename a checkpoint chat file, that checkpoint vanishes from the timeline view.
  • A renamed checkpoint chat file appears as an independent chat file in the timeline view (in the full info panel for nodes containing its messages), not connected to any checkpoint.
• If you overwrite a checkpoint, only the new checkpoint is tracked as a checkpoint path.
  • The checkpoint chat file for the old checkpoint then appears as an independent chat file in the timeline view.
• The checkpoint node in the graph is at the message where the originating chat file has the checkpoint link.

Prerequisites

SillyTavern version >=1.10.4

Support and Contributions

All feedback and issues welcome.

License

MIT