Temporary vs persistent chats.
3 MIN READ · UPDATED 2026-08The composer's Temporary toggle looks small; the semantics are worth understanding. Here's what it does and what it doesn't.
The composer has a Temporary toggle. Flip it on and the chat never writes to LADLE's database — no chat row, no messages, no artifacts. Refresh the page and the conversation is gone.
What temporary DOES
- No chat history row. - No messages persisted. - No artifact rows. - Nothing shows up in your sidebar or on any device.
What temporary does NOT
- Does NOT prevent Anthropic's API from processing the request. The tokens went through their infrastructure. - Does NOT skip metering — usage still counts against your monthly cap, meal donation still accrues from your subscription. - Does NOT provide additional encryption or a separate provider route. - Does NOT prevent Anthropic's standard 30-day trust-and-safety window from applying.
The practical distinction
"Temporary" means LADLE forgets. It does not mean "no one ever saw this." If your threat model requires "no service provider ever processes this text," temporary chats aren't the right tool — a local open-weights model is.
For most everyday cases where you don't want a chat sitting in your history, temporary is exactly what it should be.
Good uses
- **Prompt experiments** you don't want cluttering your history. - **Sensitive drafts** — a resignation letter, a medical question, a break-up message. Not "invisible to service providers" but "not re-openable if someone borrows your laptop." - **Questions you'd delete anyway.** The delete-in-advance version.
Bad uses
- **Work you'll want to reference later.** There's no undo. If you realize mid-conversation that you want to save it, you can't. - **As a substitute for privacy** in a threat model that includes API-level surveillance. Wrong tool.
The kitchen panel still works
The kitchen panel (Cmd+K) shows model + routing info for any reply, including temporary. That data lives in response headers, not the database, so temporary chats still have full transparency.
Persistent chats — what you can do that temporary can't
- Come back and read the conversation later. - Fork a chat via edit-user-message → new branch. - Star messages for later reference. - Share the chat via /share/[slug] (immutable snapshot at share time). - Have artifacts persist in your library. - Get titling + memory extraction (both async background tasks).
Most day-to-day use is persistent. Temporary is a specific tool for a specific class of chats.
- Temporary = LADLE doesn't store the chat. Anthropic's API still processes the request
- Metering + meal donation still apply — temporary doesn't bypass anything
- Good for prompt experiments, sensitive drafts, questions you'd delete anyway
- Bad if you want privacy from Anthropic itself (use a local model) or if you'll want to reference the chat later
- Kitchen panel works on temporary chats — model info lives in headers, not DB