Explore

Explore brings back ideas you dropped weeks or months ago, so they don't just sit at the bottom of the bucket. Each session is a short, finite feed of 7 cards, and every card says why it's there.

#Open Explore

• Desktop browser or Mac app: click Explore in the sidebar, or press ⌥ 3 (Alt 3 on Windows and Linux).
• Phone: open Profile, then Explore ("Wander your bucket").

The bar at the top shows how far you are through the session (for example 3 / 7). At the end you'll see "That's your wander for now." with Shuffle again and See latest drops.

#Sessions

A session is 7 cards picked from your active ideas. Archived ideas, ideas in the trash and anything you've hidden with Not now never show up.

• Shuffle: the shuffle icon next to the Explore heading (New explore session) or Shuffle again at the end starts a new session.
• No repeats for a few days: ideas shown in a session are left out of the next ones for 3 days. If that leaves too few to fill a session (a narrow filter often does), everything comes back, in a fresh order. This is remembered per device.
• Recently touched ideas wait: ideas you created, edited or opened in the last 2 days are less likely to show, since you've just seen them.
• The session stays put: switch to another tab and come back, and you'll find the same cards. Changing a filter starts a new session.
• Small buckets: with fewer than 5 matching ideas, Explore just lists them, newest first, without reasons.

Cards are mixed so a session doesn't feel samey: never more than 2 in a row for the same reason, no two cards in a row that lead with the same tag, at most 4 ideas per tag, and only a small share of "dropped this week" and random picks.

#Why each card is there

Above every card is a short line saying why it was picked:

"Close" ideas need search to have indexed them, so they appear once your bucket has a little history.

#Card types

• Quote: a short one-liner (up to 100 characters, one line, no notes) shows in big type. Two quotes never come back to back.
• Memory: an "on this day" idea shows as a postmarked memory, stamped with the day you dropped it (for example 29 SEP 2025).
• Thread: 2 or 3 older ideas that share a busy tag come as one card, with a line like "#podcast · 3 ideas, busy lately". At most one thread per session.
• Pattern: when one tag has had at least 4 new ideas in the last 2 weeks, a card says, for example, "You've dropped 6 #podcast ideas in 2 weeks", with a small bar chart of ideas per day (oldest on the left) and See them, which opens Find with that tag. At most one per session.
• Spark: a prompt from Gemini made from ideas in the session. See Spark cards.
• Standard: everything else looks like a normal idea card.

Every idea card works like it does in Find: tap it to expand, read and add notes, edit, archive or delete it. Opening a card counts as a view, so it won't be "untouched" for a while.

#Reactions

Under every idea card are four reactions:

Some details:

• Spark teaches the feed. Ideas close in meaning to the ones you sparked show up with "Because you sparked …", and sparked ideas also steer what counts as "close to what you've been thinking about". A sparked idea itself comes back a little more often, but not in the 3 days right after you spark it. Spark has no Undo.
• Not now only affects Explore. The idea stays in Latest, Find and everywhere else.
• Done is the same as archiving the idea. Find it again in Profile → Archive. See Archive.
• Reply opens a small "Add a note…" box. Press Enter or Send to save it, or Esc to close it. The note goes into the idea's notes thread, signed by you.

#Keyboard

On a desktop, keys act on the card under the pointer or the card with focus (they're ignored while you're typing in a field):

• j / k: next / previous card.
• s n d r: Spark, Not now, Done, Reply.

On a spark card, s and n spark or hide the ideas it was made from.

#Spark cards

After a session loads, Idea Bucket can ask Google Gemini for a few "sparks" made from ideas in it. One spark card is slotted in at about the 5th position, never above the cards already on your screen, so nothing you're reading jumps. Each card is labelled Gemini and is one of three kinds:

For example, crossing "#podcast interview series with gardeners" with "#garden compost bin from pallets" might give "What if the first episode was recorded inside the compost bin build?"

• Save as idea drops the spark's text as a new idea, with the tags of both ideas it came from ("Saved as a new idea").
• Add as note adds the text as a note on its idea, signed by you ("Added as a note").
• The small titles under the text are the ideas it was made from. Click one to scroll to it.
• The spark icon sparks the idea (or both ideas). The moon icon hides them for 30 days and takes the spark card away ("Both hidden for 30 days", with Undo).
• × (Dismiss) removes just the spark card.

Spark cards need a connection and at least 2 ideas in the session. To make them, the text (the first 400 characters) and tags of up to 7 ideas from the session are sent to Gemini. Sparks are limited to 30 requests an hour per account; past that, sessions simply have no spark card.

#Filters

Explore has the same Filter (tags) and date buttons as Find, so you can curate a session:

• Tags: only ideas that carry all the tags you pick, for example only #garden.
• Dates: Any time, Past week, Past month, Past 3 months, Past year, plus three Explore-only ranges: Older than a month, Older than 3 months and Older than a year.
• Tap a tag on a card to add it as a filter. The session restarts with that tag.

Active filters show as chips under the buttons. Remove one with its ×, or, when there are two or more, all of them with Clear all. If nothing matches you'll see "Nothing in your bucket matches these filters." with Clear filters.

A filter narrows what's shown, not how Explore reads your headspace: what counts as "close", your sparked ideas and which tags are "busy" still come from the whole bucket. A pattern card only appears under a tag filter when it's about one of the filtered tags, and not under a date filter alone.

#Filters in the link

Filters live in the URL, so you can bookmark a curated session or reload without losing it:

https://ideabucket.app/explore?tags=garden
https://ideabucket.app/explore?tags=podcast,tools&when=older-month

when takes week, month, 3months, year, older-month, older-3months or older-year.

#Offline

• When you open Explore, the ideas saved on your device show first while the server answers. Once you scroll or touch a card, a late answer no longer replaces what you're looking at.
• Offline, Explore builds the session from the ideas saved on this device, using the same reasons except "close" (and "because you sparked" is based on shared tags instead of meaning).
• Reactions and spark cards need a connection. The buttons are disabled and say "Reactions need a connection".
• If nothing is saved and the server can't be reached, you'll see "Can't reach Idea Bucket. Check your connection." with Retry. Explore starts a new session by itself when you're back online.