Smart Triage
Smart Triage is the AI mode of the Inbox view. Click Suggest Projects in the Inbox header and Pensum sends every open inbox task to the AI along with your project list. The model returns one suggestion per task, with a confidence level. You accept or skip each suggestion one at a time.
The point: triaging an Inbox is a chore. The decision per task (“which project does this belong to?”) is usually obvious to you but tedious to perform fifty times in a row. Smart Triage gets you through the pile in a minute instead of fifteen.
How to use it
Section titled “How to use it”- Open the Inbox view (command palette → Pensum: Open Inbox view)
- Click Suggest Projects in the Inbox header
- Wait a few seconds while Pensum batches tasks to the AI
- Suggestion badges appear on each task with a project name and a confidence level
- For each task, click Accept (assigns the task to that project) or skip it
There’s no separate review modal — the suggestions are inline on the existing Inbox list. You can keep working through the Inbox normally while suggestions are visible.
What “accepting” does
Section titled “What “accepting” does”The behavior depends on where the task lives:
| Where the task is | Accept behavior |
|---|---|
In an Inbox file (Tasks/Inbox.md or other configured inbox) | The task line is moved out of the inbox file and into the project file. The Inbox view stops showing it. |
| In a meeting note | The task line stays in the meeting note, and #project/<name> is added to the line. The project’s dashboards now include this task via tag matching. |
| Anywhere else | Same as meeting note — #project/<name> is added, the line stays in place. |
This split is intentional. Inbox is a triage staging area — once a task is triaged, it should leave. Meeting notes are durable records of what was committed in a meeting — the task line is part of the meeting’s record and shouldn’t be moved; the project tag is the right way to associate it.
Confidence levels
Section titled “Confidence levels”Each suggestion comes with a confidence level. The AI is prompted to be conservative — better to leave a task untriaged than to assign it to the wrong project.
| Level | Meaning | When you’ll see it |
|---|---|---|
| High | Obvious match from the task description and your project names. | Tasks that explicitly name a project, or use language clearly tied to one project’s domain. |
| Medium | Reasonable but uncertain. The task fits the project’s theme but doesn’t explicitly reference it. | Tasks where the project is implied — “send pricing deck” with an Acme-flavored project. |
| Low | Weak association — the AI flagged it as a “best guess” but with low confidence. The model prefers “no match” over a low guess, so low-confidence suggestions are intentionally rare. | Tasks that vaguely overlap with multiple projects. |
| (no match) | The AI couldn’t confidently match this task to any project. No badge shown; the task stays in Inbox untriaged. | Tasks that genuinely don’t belong to a current project — research, personal, one-offs. |
Use confidence as a hint for how much to trust the suggestion. High = accept without thinking. Medium = read the task and decide. Low = probably skip and triage manually. (No match) = leave it; create a new project if it represents a stream of work that doesn’t have one yet.
Batching
Section titled “Batching”Pensum batches up to 20 tasks per AI call to keep cost and latency reasonable. For a 50-task Inbox, you’ll see suggestions appear in roughly 3 batches over 5–10 seconds.
If a batch fails mid-run, the tasks in that batch are skipped (no suggestions shown) but the rest of the batches continue. Failed batches show in the Activity log.
What the AI sees
Section titled “What the AI sees”Each call sends:
- A list of tasks: ID, description, current tags
- Your project list: name + a short description (the first line of the project file, if any)
The AI doesn’t see your full project files, your task history, or anything else from your vault. The prompt is designed for surgical project assignment, not general vault context.
What “no match” looks like
Section titled “What “no match” looks like”The Inbox view is mostly about getting to inbox-zero. Smart Triage helps with the project-assignment piece, but plenty of inbox tasks won’t have a project — and that’s fine. Common no-match cases:
- Personal errands — “buy birthday gift for mom” doesn’t belong to a work project
- One-off research — “read the new compliance memo” might not warrant its own project
- Cross-project utility tasks — “update password manager,” “renew passport,” etc.
- Tasks that need a new project — if the AI sees three tasks about a theme that doesn’t match any existing project, it’ll skip them; you might want to create a new project for that theme
A no-match suggestion doesn’t mean you have to delete or hide the task. It just means Smart Triage couldn’t help with this one — you decide what to do with it manually.
Choosing a model
Section titled “Choosing a model”Smart Triage defaults to the same lightweight model as Smart Capture (Claude Haiku 4.5 in the catalog) for the same reasons: latency, low cost, simple structured output. Change which model under Settings → AI → Smart Triage.
The dropdown filters by your plan and configured providers. Custom model IDs accepted for BYO power users.
On a lightweight model, triaging 50 tasks costs around $0.02 in provider fees for Pro BYO. Pro All-in-One has this included.
When NOT to use Smart Triage
Section titled “When NOT to use Smart Triage”- Your inbox is already small (<10 tasks) — eyeball it
- You have very few projects (1–2) — the AI doesn’t have much to choose from
- Your projects are highly overlapping — the AI will struggle to disambiguate, and you’re better off triaging manually
- You’re doing one-off captures that don’t fit projects (errands, personal stuff) — Smart Triage will produce a lot of no-match results, which is fine but anticlimactic
A great use case: you’ve been on vacation, captured 40 tasks across two weeks, and need to clear the backlog. One click, one minute, done.
Re-running
Section titled “Re-running”Hit Suggest Projects again any time. New suggestions overwrite old ones. If you’ve added tasks to the Inbox since the last triage, those get picked up too.
Suggestions don’t persist across plugin reloads — close Obsidian, re-open, and the suggestion badges are gone. The triage decisions you accepted are persistent (because they edited the underlying files); only the un-accepted suggestion overlay is transient.