# Files and Sync

> How Solipsist keeps your original files safe, and how your changes get back to them.

Solipsist never edits your files while you write. It copies the ones you pick into `.solipsist/pages/`, and you work
on the copies. Every save, comment and agent request lives there, on your machine.

## Sync to file

*[Picture: The top bar: back to the pages, the page's title and Saved]* The top bar says whether the working copy is saved; Sync to file and Reload from file sit beside it.

**Sync to file** writes a page back to its original file, but only the parts you changed. Solipsist keeps a copy of
the original exactly as it was when you loaded it (in `.solipsist/originals/`), so the lines you didn't touch come
back byte for byte, formatting included.

If the original has changed since you loaded it (you edited it somewhere else, or pulled from git), Sync stops and
asks first. **Reload from file** pulls those outside changes into the page and merges them with yours. After that you
can sync.

*[Picture: The Sync dialog: the original changed since it was loaded, with Reload from file]*

## What's in a page

Comments and agent requests are stored in a hidden HTML comment at the end of the working copy, so a page is still one
plain markdown file. See [Page format](https://solipsist.sh/docs/reference/page-format/). An HTML comment you wrote yourself is kept
exactly as you wrote it and shown as a chip:

*[Picture: Hand-written HTML comments shown as small chips with their first words]*

## One tab per page

You can only have a page open in one tab at a time. A second tab on the same page tells you it's already open.
Different pages can be open side by side.

:::danger
`git clean -fdx` deletes `.solipsist/`, and with it anything you haven't synced yet.
:::

Source: https://solipsist.sh/docs/guides/files-and-sync/