A folder describes where something belongs. An intent describes what a person hopes to do with it. For a personal collection, those are different pieces of information.
A restaurant can belong in “Travel,” but the user might have saved it for a birthday meal. An article can belong in “Design,” but its intended job might be to support a pricing-page redesign.
Offer a small, understandable vocabulary
For a prototype, I would try four optional intents: read, buy, visit, and use. These are starting points, not a universal taxonomy. Include an empty option and let a note carry more specific meaning.
The field should be attached to the save, rather than treated as an immutable property of the resource. Two people can save the same item for different jobs, and one person can change their mind later.
Pair the label with a sentence
“Use” is broad. “Use this diagram style for the architecture presentation” is specific enough to recognize later. Let the interface offer a one-line note beside the intent selector rather than several nested categories.
In a result card, show both the intent and the note. That gives the user a reason to open a resource without requiring them to reconstruct the original context.
Do not force uncertain decisions
Sometimes a person saves something because it looks interesting and has no immediate plan. Allow that. Making a guessed intention mandatory creates misleading metadata and slows capture.
Review can be a better moment to ask about purpose. An inbox filter for “no intent yet” could provide a gentle prompt without interrupting the original save.
Test the vocabulary
Ask users to apply these labels to real saves. Watch where they hesitate or choose the same label for unrelated meanings. Their explanations can reveal whether the vocabulary fits or needs to change.
The Némos prompt “give every save a job” is a useful design hypothesis. The interface should help people express that job without making organization a project of its own.
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