Projects¶

A project keeps everything about one product in one place: a brief, the agents working on it, shared files, what the project has learned along the way, and the questions that wait for you. Every agent in a project reads the same brief and the same files, and your main assistant, MAIN, coordinates them. You talk to MAIN in the project chat; it hands work to the agents and tells you when it is done.

When MAIN hands an agent a piece of work, the chat shows a row for that agent; open it to watch the agent work as it happens, and read its answer there once it is done.

Nothing becomes a project on its own. Your agents and chats keep working outside projects exactly as before.

Your projects¶

Projects in the left menu lists your projects as cards. With no projects yet, the page explains how projects work and offers ideas to start from; each idea opens a chat with MAIN that sets the project up with you.

Above the list, How it works shows the four steps of a project; More adds answers to common questions, and Hide folds the panel away in this browser. Search by name or brief, show All, only the projects that Need you or only those Working, and sort by what needs you, latest activity or name. The page loads your projects in batches; Show more projects reads the next batch, and a search, filter or sort other than the default reads all of them first.

Each card shows the project's brief and what matters most right now:

a question waiting for you, with who asks it and when MAIN decides, or a lock when only you can decide;
Working, Stopped (an agent ran into an error), No progress or Done, with the latest step;
Nothing started yet for a new project: open it and tell MAIN what to do first.

Below are the project's agents (or MAIN will choose agents), when something last happened and how many files the project has.

Create a project¶

Open Projects in the left menu and choose New project, or ask MAIN to set one up ("Help me set up a project"). In the dialog:

Name and What is it? — one sentence is enough. Every agent in the project reads it, and you can add to it anytime.
Who works on it — tick the built-in specialists, and use Add agents to search your agents: your own and the ones shared with you (marked with whose they are); the ones you opened lately come first. A shared agent joins once you have agreed to how it uses your data: open it once first. Not sure? Skip it: MAIN brings in agents when the work needs them. MAIN is always in the project: it is your project chat.
Bring in work you already have (optional) — a Web Developer project, a Designer design or a chat with MAIN. A chat you bring in becomes the project chat. Brought-in work stays in its own app too.

You can change all of this later in the project's Settings.

The project page¶

The project opens as a chat with MAIN, with the project panel on the right. The project chat lives here, not in your list of chats; when a chat with MAIN becomes a project's chat, the page switches to the project. On a phone the chat takes the whole screen; the panel opens from the button in the header, and a strip above the message box tells you when questions are waiting. When an agent opens a file for you to look at, the panel comes back if you folded it; on a phone the panel button gets a dot, and the file is open when you tap it.

The panel shows the project's Overview: Waiting for you (questions from agents), Agents and what each is doing, the Brief, Recent files, and a link to what the project remembers. Drop files onto Recent files, or choose Add files there, to add them to the project. A file you open from the Overview gets its own tab next to it, in the same viewer as the canvas.

Once the Web Developer has a project here (after its first task, or a Web Developer project you brought in), a Preview tab appears next to the Overview. It shows the app the Web Developer is building, running live in the panel, so you can click through it without leaving the project. Open in a new tab opens the same app in a browser tab of its own, and Open task takes you to the Web Developer's task. Open preview on the Web Developer's row in Agents opens the same tab. When the app's environment is off, still starting, paused or has failed, the tab says so instead; while it starts, the tab updates by itself. An environment goes to sleep when nobody uses it: Start the app wakes it up again (after a failure it rebuilds it), or ask MAIN and it hands the start to the Web Developer. The reload button loads the app again with a fresh link, which stays valid for 12 hours.

The Files and Settings buttons in the page header (on a phone, at the top of the panel) open the project's own pages, each with Back to chat:

Files — everything in the project (see below).
Settings — name, agents, brought-in work, how MAIN runs the work, how long MAIN waits, what the project remembers, and delete.

How MAIN runs the work¶

In a project, MAIN leads the work instead of doing all of it. Before anything is made, it sends a plan: the stages in order, who does each one and what comes out of it. You answer on the plan's card:

Step by step: show me each stage — after each stage MAIN shows what came out and waits for you to say go on or what to change.
Do it all, show me at the end — MAIN goes through the plan on its own and stops only for a question it can't answer from the brief.

You can also ask for changes to the plan before saying yes. Until you pick, MAIN goes step by step. To change it later, tell MAIN in the project chat ("from now on do it yourself") or pick it in Settings → How MAIN runs the work.

Work that one of the project's agents does, such as designs or code, goes to that agent. MAIN does the rest itself: answers about the project, a quick lookup, and anything no agent in the project covers. A project can have no other agents at all; then MAIN does the work itself, in the same stages.

Cards in the project chat, such as a plan, a question, work handed to the Web Developer or a request between agents, appear inside MAIN's answer, right under the step that made them, both while MAIN is still answering and later.

Agents¶

Everyone in the project reads the brief, the files and what the project remembers. Add an agent from Overview or Settings: a built-in specialist, one of your own agents or one shared with you. Work a shared agent does in the project is paid by you, as when MAIN hands it any other task. Before MAIN gives an agent shared with you personally its first task in the project, the project chat asks you Hand this task to …?, unless Donkit can assign tasks is on for it; your answer holds for the whole project chat. Remove takes an agent out; its open questions close without an answer and its conversation stays in its own app. Right after removing one, Undo puts it back.

An agent's row shows its state: Working, Waiting for you, Done, Idle, Stopped (it ran into an error) or No progress (it has not moved for a while). The same mark appears next to the project in the left menu: a number when questions wait for you, a red cross when an agent stopped, an amber clock when nothing moves, a spinner while an agent works.

A project holds up to 8 agents. Typing @ in the project chat offers the project's agents only; add an agent to the project to address it there.

Agents ask each other¶

Agents in a project can ask each other for help directly. The Web Developer can ask the Designer for something, or the Designer can ask the Researcher. The request goes to the other agent's own chat in the project, so whatever it makes lands in the project's files where everyone sees it. The project chat shows each request as a card with who asked whom; while the other agent works, the card shows its work as it happens, then the answer. Open conversation on the card shows the whole exchange.

Work handed to the Web Developer runs in the background in a task of its own, as it does when MAIN hands it work. The agent that asked hears back once the work is done. Videos work the same way: an agent that queued a video finishes its part right away, and when the video is ready (or fails) MAIN picks it up in the project chat and tells you; the video is already in the project's files.

Agents in a project ask only each other. They don't call your agents that are not in the project.

Files¶

Files is a page of its own, reached from the project (Back to chat returns you). It lists what you and the agents put in the project, grouped by who made it (each agent in the project, then you) and, within that, by format: documents, designs, images, videos, audio, PDFs, data, code, archives and other files. Each file shows who has used it and when it changed. Click a group to fold or unfold it; code starts folded, since a developer's app can hold hundreds of files, and a search unfolds every group with a match. Search, Add files or drop files onto the page to upload your own; an upload shows its progress in the table, and one that fails says why and can be dismissed. When an agent makes a file for the project it lands here automatically, and MAIN tells the next agent it is there. Images and videos an agent generates in the project go to the media folder, a video once it has finished rendering. Any image in the project's files can be the reference for the next image or video, whichever agent made it, so a character keeps its look across a series. The Web Developer keeps its own repository and copies the app into the app folder each time it finishes a step of its plan; files ignored by git, such as installed dependencies and build output, stay out. Files you attach in the project chat, or in a chat with one of the project's agents, are added to the project as yours; a file with the same name as an existing one replaces it. The page shows the newest files first and Show more files reads the next batch.

Click a file to open it beside the table, in the same viewer as the canvas. The preview can be opened in a new tab or downloaded, shows which agent is using the file and in which task, and offers Open in the app of the agent that made it and Ask MAIN about this file.

A file can be at most 100 MB; a larger one is refused with a message saying so.

On the Mac app a project can be a folder on your computer: the files are kept in step between the folder and the project.

Questions and "Decide for me"¶

An agent in a project that needs your decision asks a question. Questions arrive in the project chat, in the Waiting for you list, and in the agent's own conversation — the same question in all three, and answering it anywhere answers it everywhere. The list shows three questions at a time, ones only you can answer first, then the soonest.

MAIN will decide in … — if you don't answer in time, MAIN answers for you from the brief and what the project remembers. It always shows that MAIN answered, and why; never as you. You can say you disagree in the chat, and MAIN passes it on and updates what the project remembers.
Decide for me — hands one question to MAIN right away.
Only you can decide — questions about money, publishing, sending code outside the project and deleting data always wait for you. They have no countdown and no Decide for me.

How long MAIN waits¶

In Settings, When I don't answer a question sets the wait: 15 minutes, 30 minutes (the default), 1 hour, 4 hours, or Never decide for me.

What the project remembers¶

MAIN adds to this list as you decide things, and every agent in the project uses it. Open Settings → What the project remembers to read it and remove anything that is wrong; a long list shows the newest entries first, and Show more reads the rest.

Delete a project¶

Settings → Delete project asks you to type the project's name. Deleted: the project page, brief, memory, project chat and the files stored only in the project. Kept, in their own apps: each agent's own work — Web Developer projects and tasks, Designer designs, Researcher reports — and each agent's conversation.