Keeping the inbox small

An inbox is a working set, not an archive. Lookout keeps it small in three ways, and deletes nothing.

Old entries stay out

Every source has max_age_days (30 by default, 0 for no limit). An entry published before that is not stored; an entry with no date is kept. Set it in the source form ("Ignore entries older than") or in the file:

sources:
  - name: ai blog
    type: rss
    url: https://example.com/feed.xml
    max_age_days: 14

A feed that serves its whole archive no longer buries you the first time you add it. Raise the limit to bring older entries in at the next run; note that they will then expire at once if they are older than the limit of their priority (below), and wait in the Expired view.

Rule floors also respect age: an advisory published more than rules_window_days (30) ago gets no P0 or P1 floor, so a 300-day-old release cannot ask you to act today. The model's score still ranks it.

Untouched items expire

An item you never opened, finished, dismissed, snoozed or starred moves to the Expired view after a time that depends on how urgent it was:

Priority	Expires after
P0	never
P1	30 days
P2	14 days
P3	7 days

Change it under retention.expire_after_days in the configuration (0 means never). The age counts from the publication date. Expiry happens at every run and when Lookout starts.

Expiry is not a signal. Lookout does not learn from it, because an item you were too busy to read says nothing about your taste. Open an expired item (or choose Reopen) and it comes back as seen.

Two orders, and pages

The list can be ordered two ways, kept in the address so you can bookmark either:

• Triage: priority first, then your profile, then date. The default.
• Latest: newest first, whatever the priority, with a divider before what arrived since your last visit.

Either way the list shows 50 items and a Load more button, with the real total ("50 of 2329").

Clearing a backlog

Filter to what you want (a category, a source, "older than 2 weeks") and use Mark all N as .... Lookout counts and shows a sample first, asks you to confirm, and offers Undo afterwards.