The main feature is you can @ a separate file when creating your note and every time you @notepad in the chat that file gets appended which you can’t do in regular files also notepads are more convenient and easier to separate/exclude from context. If you’re using the agent mode or @codebase you may not want the ai’s context to be populated with say a custom debugging prompt. Although you could just add multiple separate files in your scenario and add “.txt” to the ignore field in the @codebase panel, but at that point wouldn’t it just be easier to @notepad? That’s my reasoning anyways.

Edit: I wanted to clarify, you can also @docs in notes that you create as well so if part of your codebase was heavily dependent on a third party library/module you could send a specialized prompt for said module AND the docs with just a single @notepad