--- title: "Revisit a Question Over Weeks Without Starting Over | Omphalis" description: "Keep the question, its sources and your notes on the passages in one notebook. Come back weeks later, reopen your marks, add a source and ask again." canonical: "https://omphalis.ai/revisit-a-question" source: "https://omphalis.ai/revisit-a-question" --- Over time # Come back to an unfinished question with your notes and sources beside it. Real questions do not close in one sitting. A thesis chapter, a policy brief, a decision you keep circling: you read some, write a note, stop, and come back three weeks later unsure where you were. Too often the next sitting starts over from a notes file that has lost its sources. Omphalis is a workspace for understanding. Build understanding from the sources that matter to you. Here, that means the question lives with its material: the sources, your notes on the passages, and the answers you asked for sit together in one notebook, so the next sitting starts where the last one stopped. [Start free](https://app.omphalis.ai/signup?entry_site=omphalis-marketing&entry_intent=revisit) 30-day trial, no card required. Includes 600 comprehension units, 200 Ask voice minutes and 15 assistant answers a day. After that, Free stays free. [See plan allowances.](https://omphalis.ai/pricing) [See the reader on a real piece first →](https://omphalis.ai/demo?entry_site=omphalis-marketing&entry_intent=revisit) Updated October 21, 2026 ## Why does coming back to a question usually mean starting over? The notes file kept your conclusion and lost the passage that led to it. The browser tabs are gone. The half-read paper does not say where you stopped, or which line you meant to check. So you reread from the top, and the question moves no further than it did last time. [Half-remembered is the default](https://omphalis.ai/blog/half-remembered-is-the-default-a-field-guide-to-actually-returning-to-what-you-read) is the longer essay on why that happens. ## How do you keep a question with its material? Make a notebook for the question and write the question at the top in your own words. Add the sources to it: articles, PDFs, podcasts, and video and YouTube links. Add the marks you kept while reading, and each one arrives with the kept text, your note, its tag, and a link back to the exact line. Ask the question in the notebook. The answer draws on the sources in that notebook and on what you wrote in it, not on a web search. The question and its answer stay in the notebook as a cell, with the date you asked it and a chip for each source that opens the paragraph it cites. That cell is the record you come back to, not a chat that scrolled away. [![Finding our first users notebook with two Paul Graham essays, a note, and a question answered from the startup ideas essay](https://omphalis.ai/screenshots/usecase-notebook-first-users.webp)](https://omphalis.ai/screenshots/usecase-notebook-first-users.webp) Finding our first users holds two Paul Graham essays, a working note, and an Ask answer. The answer shown cites How to Get Startup Ideas. Select the image to see the detail. ## How do you pick up where you stopped? ### Reopen your marks Open the notebook first: the question, the answer you kept, and the passages you marked are on one page. For everything else you kept, the Marks page lists marks by source, by date, or by collection. Choose Notes to see only the marks that carry a note, or search your highlighted words and notes. Select a mark to see it in context and open the source at that passage. [Highlights and notes](https://omphalis.ai/highlights) covers how a single mark works. [![The library Marks list grouped by source, with five highlights from Mattering That It’s You, one carrying a note, and Open beside each source](https://omphalis.ai/screenshots/reader-marks-library.webp)](https://omphalis.ai/screenshots/reader-marks-library.webp) Marks collected in the library, grouped by source. Select a mark to see it in context and open the source at that passage. Select the image to see the detail. ### Start from the tags you left A kept mark takes one tag: Important, Confusing, Disagree, or Use later. Weeks later, the tags are a record of where you stopped. Say the methods section of the second paper was the part you could not follow: the mark you tagged Confusing takes you straight back to that paragraph, with your note on what you did not get. ### Ask again with what you already have Ask the question again in the notebook and read the new answer beside the one from last time. In the Ask panel, type @ to pull in a particular item or another notebook. Open the citations before you trust a change of mind. ## What happens when a new source arrives? Add it to the notebook and read it with explanations beside the hard passages. Then ask the question again across the set and open the citations. If the new source pulls against an old one, mark both passages, tag them Disagree, and write down why. [Comparing what several sources say](https://omphalis.ai/synthesize-sources) in one sitting has its own page. On paid plans, Connections can bring an earlier marked passage alongside something you save later. Open both sources and decide whether the connection is useful. ## Who is this for? ### A thesis or a long paper The chapter question stays open for months. Keep the papers in its notebook, tag the methods you could not follow as Confusing, and come back to them when you have read the background. When the papers are the hard part, [read one research paper with help beside it](https://omphalis.ai/research-papers). ### A question at work A brief, a report, or a decision that waits on the next piece of evidence. When the evidence arrives, add it, ask again, and keep the newer answer beside the older one. ### A question of your own Something you keep reading about because you want to understand it. The notebook holds what you have read so far and what you thought of it, so a new article has somewhere to go. [Ask a question about what you read](https://omphalis.ai/ask) · [Come back to saved articles](https://omphalis.ai/read-later) · [See plans and the trial](https://omphalis.ai/pricing) · [Returning to something you read a year ago](https://omphalis.ai/blog/returning-to-something-you-read-a-year-ago-and-still-finding-it) ## What else should you know about coming back to a question? How can I revisit the same question over weeks with my notes and sources side by side? In Omphalis, a workspace for understanding, keep the question in a notebook with its sources, your marks and the answers you asked for there. Your notes stay on the passages they are about, the Marks page reopens each one in context, and tags such as Confusing or Use later show where you stopped. When a new source arrives, add it and ask the question again. Do my notes stay on the passage? Yes. A highlight is anchored to its words and the text on either side, so it stays on the right passage even after the item is processed again, and your note stays beside it. A mark added to a notebook keeps the kept text, your note and its tag, with a link back to the exact line. What happens to an answer I asked for last time? If you asked it in the notebook, it is still there as a cell: the question, the answer, the date you asked it, and a chip for each source that opens the cited paragraph. Ask again later and keep the new answer beside the old one, so you can see what the newer sources changed. Can I export my notes? Yes. In Settings, Export Your Library writes each item as a Markdown file with its marked passages. In the Library, Manage then Export, with Marks ticked, includes your highlights with their notes and tags, grouped by source. Is this a note-taking app? Omphalis is a workspace for understanding your sources. You do write notes, but they live on the passages they are about and in the notebook beside the sources, not in a separate file that has lost them. What can I bring in? Articles, PDFs, podcasts, and video and YouTube links. PDFs are read during the trial and on every plan above Free, from your units. On Free a PDF is kept with its name and page count but not read. ## Bring the question you keep coming back to. Put it in a notebook with its sources, keep your notes on the passages, and start the next sitting where this one stops. [Start free](https://app.omphalis.ai/signup?entry_site=omphalis-marketing&entry_intent=revisit) 30-day trial, no card required. Includes 600 comprehension units, 200 Ask voice minutes and 15 assistant answers a day. After that, Free stays free. [See plan allowances.](https://omphalis.ai/pricing) Written by [Omphalis team](https://omphalis.ai/about) · Last updated October 21, 2026 --- Listed on: [Featured on launched.tools REVIEWED ✓](https://launched.tools/tools/omphalis)