Documents & sharing

The Docs drawer (sidebar folder icon) is the unified view of every file in your workspace.

What’s in it

  • Uploads — anything you’ve dragged into chat or uploaded directly (PDFs, images, CSVs, code).
  • AI images — every image generated by your image agent.
  • AI videos — every video from the video generator.
  • Research documents — long-form research output from deep_research.
  • Code projects — sandboxed projects the coder has worked in. Downloadable as zip.
  • Notes — a separate tab for free-form personal notes.

Tabs at the top of the drawer filter by kind (All / Photos / Videos / Audio / Code).

Attach, keep, and reference files

Attach up to six files to one message using the paperclip, drag-and-drop, or paste. Check the attachment tray before sending. The message keeps references to all of its sent attachments across a reload.

When Keep … in your files? appears after a reply, Keep leaves the file in your profile and Discard deletes the saved file. Ignoring that prompt keeps it. Removing an unsent item from the tray is a separate action.

Type @ to find an agent or a saved file. For example, choose @audio/meeting.wav from autocomplete to reference an existing recording.

Transcribe audio and video

Attach a recording and ask “Transcribe this,” or reference a saved audio/video file with @. OE uses its configured STT service; video transcription also needs ffmpeg to extract the audio. The upload limit is 500 MB, and the chosen transcription provider can have a smaller input limit.

Uploaded audio appears under Audio, with an inline player. Earlier files may remain in their original Documents location. Cloud transcription sends the recording to that configured provider.

Sharing with other users on the same install

Click the share icon on any item, pick which users to share it with, save. Shared files show up in the recipient’s Docs drawer with an “uploaded by {name}” label. Sharing is one-way: the original owner can revoke; recipients can’t reshare.

You can also share with everyone by setting the audience to “Everyone” — useful for house-wide reference docs.

Sharing outside the install

OpenEnsemble doesn’t generate public download URLs by default — sharing is intra-install. If you want a doc on the public internet, download it locally and host it elsewhere. This is deliberate: most installs aren’t internet-facing.

How agents use documents

The profile_files skill is the single tool every agent uses to list and read your files: “Summarise the PDF I uploaded yesterday” works because the agent can list and open everything in your Docs drawer. (Earlier versions had a separate shared-docs skill — that’s been folded into profile_files. Cross-user shares show up annotated with the sharing user’s name.)

Anything you drop into chat — paperclip, paste, drag — now persists with a stable file_id (e.g. documents:doc_abc123). Earlier versions kept chat uploads only for the immediate turn; they’re now first-class files you can reference in later sessions, attach to email by id, or list via list_profile_files.

Agents can also add to your Docs drawer:

  • Image agent → AI images tab
  • Video agent → AI videos tab
  • Researcher → Research tab
  • Coder → Code Projects tab

Editing documents with your agent

Text documents (markdown, txt, csv, code files) and research documents can be edited by asking your agent — there’s no manual editor; chat is the interface:

  1. Open the doc in the Docs drawer and hit the 🤖 Ask Agent button (or just mention the doc in chat).
  2. Tell the agent what to change: “fix the grammar”, “make it more formal”, “add a section about pricing”.
  3. Chat shows a compact document preview while the agent works, then a clickable preview of the saved result. The document body is not dumped into the conversation.
  4. Click the result to open the document workspace. The current document, version history, and review controls update live.

Nothing is ever lost. Every edit is saved as a new version — the original upload becomes v1 the first time a doc is edited, and every iteration after that is kept. The workspace keeps the full trail in the right-side History rail: who changed what and when, a side-by-side comparison with the preceding version, and one-click Restore (which itself adds a new version, so restores are undoable).

Agents can also create brand-new documents (“make me a packing list for the camping trip”) — they land in the Documents tab.

Only the document’s owner can edit or restore; docs shared with you are read-only (ask your agent for an edited copy instead). PDFs, Word files, and media can’t be edited — only viewed. Research documents get the same version trail whether you edit them from the viewer or the Researcher updates them itself.

Storage

Files live under users/{userId}/:

  • documents/ — profile files, including document and media folders
  • documents/code/ — code projects
  • Research and older media can also have their own legacy storage locations; use the Docs drawer and a full profile backup to include them.

Backups (see Backup, restore, auto-update) include all of these.

Deleting

Hover any item → trash icon. AI outputs and uploads are deleted from disk; research docs are removed from the index. Code projects can be deleted from the coder agent or via the Docs drawer.

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