Projects and goals

Projects keep an outcome and the work toward it together: goals, completion conditions, progress, shared context, reference files, saved results, and independent chat histories.

Open Projects and goals using the folder button in the sidebar, then choose Add Project. Enter your full prompt in What should this project accomplish?, including the task, constraints, and any agents you want to use. For example: “Use four agents to research these options, compare their findings, and write a final recommendation.” The prompt supports up to 12,000 characters and keeps paragraphs and code formatting. Give the project a name and describe the expected result in Done when. Choose any reference files in Files; shared context and manual tasks are optional. Create Project saves the full prompt with its first goal, then uploads and attaches the selected files. Saving does not launch an agent. Use Add Goal inside the project to define additional outcomes.

The project’s Overview shows goals, completion conditions, next steps, blockers, deadlines, and work status. Existing project goals appear here automatically. A project can have multiple goals; active work appears first, and completed goals remain available. Older projects without goals can add one here.

Choose a Lead agent and review the visible Instructions for this run box, which starts with your saved prompt. You can adjust this copy for the current run; use Edit goal → Prompt and instructions to change the saved version. Leaving the run box empty uses the saved prompt. Choose Start work to send the instructions and completion condition to the lead agent. OE starts an ordinary agent turn in a separate project conversation and returns immediately so you can keep chatting. The lead agent uses its configured model, the project’s context, and existing permissions. You can specify helper agents and review requirements in the prompt; explicit model requests use the same validation as chat. The lead agent is instructed to plan, carry out authorized work, review delegated results, and update the saved goal with verified progress.

Work status refreshes while Overview is open. Open work conversation shows the full exchange, agent activity, and results. If a skill or permission is needed, Respond in chat opens the existing approval flow. A finished reply is shown as Review results until the goal itself has been verified and marked complete; saving a plan or receiving a worker report alone does not finish it.

Pause work asks that goal’s conversation and its background workers to stop and pauses the goal. Continue work resumes an unfinished goal; when using the same lead agent, it reuses the work conversation so earlier results remain available. Repeated Start requests do not create duplicate runs. Provider failures and interrupted work are shown for review rather than automatically launching a replacement. These runs use normal chat and worker limits and are not recurring schedules.

After reviewing the result, you can choose Mark complete and confirm that its Done when condition has been met. Reopen goal makes a completed goal available for further work. Remove goal removes a paused or completed goal and its prepared drafts while keeping its work conversations and project files. Completion and removal are blocked while that goal’s work is running or waiting for your input; pause the work and let it stop first.

If a goal changes while you are editing it, your draft stays visible. Choose Review saved changes to combine edits to different fields. When both versions changed the same field, compare the latest saved value and choose Keep my edit or Use saved value. Review the combined draft, then Save goal. Your choices and unresolved conflicts survive a reload in the same tab.

Choose Open chat for a separate project discussion. The project name above chat shows which space is active; General chat returns to your ordinary conversations.

Shared context

Every agent answering inside a space receives its saved brief, decisions, next steps, checklist, goals, and file references. Delegated workers inherit that context. Use Context & tasks to keep the project’s decisions and current state up to date; saved changes apply to the next message. The notes and checklist are edited by you. Agents can update goal progress through the goal tools.

Automatic progress and clearing context

Use Clear session or type /clear by itself to clear the current agent’s conversation. Inside a project, OE first saves the conversation and a handoff automatically, including available partial replies and tool results when work was interrupted. If saving fails, the conversation is kept and Clear reports an error. Other project chats stay intact.

The next project message includes saved handoffs so the agent can resume from previous findings, decisions, and remaining work. A compact summary is prepared using the same agent’s configured model; saved excerpts remain available if that model is unavailable. Agents can read or search the full saved conversations with read_project_progress. Interrupted operations are not treated as completed work.

Open the project’s Checkpoints tab to review handoffs or download saved conversations. OE also saves a handoff before automatically trimming older project history. Your shared brief, decisions, next steps, and checklist remain your own editable notes. Clearing a project conversation preserves its saved progress; it is not a deletion of those archives. General chat clears without creating project handoffs.

Progress is stored under users/<profile>/project-spaces/<projectId>/progress.json, with the saved conversations alongside it, and is included in profile backups. Work already cleared or trimmed before this feature was enabled cannot be recovered through it.

Each agent has its own original conversation within the project. Chats & activity opens those conversations, including earlier messages after a reload. Switching chats or projects leaves running work in its original conversation. Different browser tabs can use different spaces.

Multiple chats can run at the same time, including chats with the same agent. Each response updates its originating chat’s history. Reopen that chat to see its latest messages and running work. A shared model provider may queue requests even though OE keeps the conversations independent.

Use the Saved chats button beside Attach to keep additional conversations inside a project. New chat preserves the current conversation while starting a separate history. Project notes and progress remain shared. See Saved chats.

Chats, activity, and updates

Open Chats & activity to see the original conversations and named saved chats together, including each participating agent. Search by chat, agent, or the latest message. Status shows Working, Needs your input, Finished, Failed, or Interrupted, and includes active delegated workers. Open chat opens that exact conversation. The view refreshes every five seconds while visible.

The Projects and goals toolbar button shows an unread count when a reply finishes, work reports a result, or an agent needs attention in a project. Open Projects and goals → Updates to return to an updated chat or dismiss its notice. Updates are stored in your profile and remain available after a reload. Reading the active conversation acknowledges its updates; looking at another project does not. A finished reply does not mean all project tasks are complete. Check the conversation’s worker status for work still running.

Use Save checkpoint beside a conversation or under a reply to preserve its history immediately without clearing it. If it is still running, the checkpoint includes the available partial reply and identifies it as unfinished. Checkpoints appear in Checkpoints and are available to future project turns.

Save decisions, references, and outputs

Under a project reply, choose Save as decision, Save as reference, or Save as output. Give the result a title and review or edit the excerpt before saving. Saved results collects decisions and references with links to their source conversations. Recent saved decisions and references are included in future project messages; existing running turns keep the context with which they started.

Outputs collects generated documents, images, videos, and supported document or code links from project conversations, along with replies saved as outputs. Each entry identifies its source agent and conversation. Document versions record when the output was produced; downloading opens the current underlying file. Original files remain in their usual document or media storage. Reference uploads are still listed separately under Files. Older outputs are discovered from retained conversation history; outputs recorded after this feature was enabled also remain indexed after context is cleared.

Project conversation history and composer drafts are separate from general chat and other spaces. OE does not automatically learn project conversations into its general conversation memory. Your profile’s standing preferences, explicitly saved memories, agents, connected services, and tool permissions remain available; a project is an organizational space within your profile, not a separate permissions sandbox.

Files and tasks

Files are visible in New Project, Overview, and the Files tab beside Overview. For example, name a project “Document review,” set its goal to summarize a document, describe the desired summary in Done when, and select the document under Files. Create the project, then choose a lead agent and Start work. The agent receives the project’s file references and can read the document for the summary.

Files selected in New Project wait until you create the project; keep the tab open until the upload finishes. Uploads to an existing project attach immediately. If an upload or attachment fails, the project and files already attached are kept. Retry upload retries the remaining files without recreating the project or its goal. Finish attaching the selected files before starting work.

Files are stored in your profile and linked to the project. Click a file to download it. Remove link removes it from the project while keeping the original profile file. Files uploaded only through the chat composer remain chat attachments; add them through the project’s Files section when they should be shared project references.

The Tasks section is a manual work list. Add an item, expand Assignment, dependencies and result, and choose an agent, conversation, status, prerequisites, relevant file paths, and a result link. Choose Save changes to share the updated tasks. An assignment does not start an agent or create a scheduled reminder; open the assigned chat to give the instruction. Existing checklist items remain available.

Prerequisites must be complete before a dependent task can be saved as working or done. Tasks marked working that claim the same file or overlapping directory display a warning. Use consistent workspace paths so the comparison is useful. These are coordination warnings based on the paths you record, not filesystem locks. Agents receive the saved assignments and dependencies as project context.

Agent tasks scheduled from project chat retain the project’s context and conversation when they run, including after a server restart. Manage those schedules in the existing Tasks drawer.

The separate Projects sidebar view keeps existing private drafts and suggestions available. Choose Manage goal to open a goal’s controls in its project’s Overview. Prepare next step remains available for optional private drafts. Project creation and Start work do not require preparation settings. See Goals and prepared work for optional automatic drafts.

Existing goals and projects

Existing projects and their goals stay in place. Older goals that were saved outside a project move into a General goals project in the same profile. Their saved progress, active/paused/completed status, completion condition, deadlines, next checks, reference files, and prepared drafts are preserved. Completed goals remain completed. The conversion saves a recovery copy and can retry after an interruption without creating duplicate projects or goals. A preparation already running is allowed to finish before its goal moves; until then, that goal remains available in the Projects drawer.

General chat can still read and update these goals, and new goals tracked from general chat join the same project. Earlier conversations and schedules remain in general chat. You can rename General goals without breaking that connection. Deleting it explicitly removes its goals and project work; it keeps earlier general conversations and profile files. A later goal from general chat creates a fresh project.

Saving, archiving, and deleting

Unsaved project text, including the New Project form and its first goal, is retained as a draft in this browser tab across reloads. Choose Add Project to return to an unfinished New Project draft. Selected files that have not uploaded must be selected again after a reload. Separate tabs keep separate drafts. If another tab saves the project context first, OE rejects the stale save and keeps your draft visible. Copy any edits you want to preserve, then choose Reload saved version before combining the changes.

Use Archive to set a finished project aside while keeping its files and conversations available. Mark completed tasks Done and choose Save changes before archiving if you want the checklist to reflect the result. Choose Unarchive to return the project to active work. Archiving does not stop running work or cancel scheduled tasks; pause those in Tasks if needed.

To permanently remove a project, open Projects and goals → your project → Context & tasks, scroll down, and choose Delete project. Review the project name and removal list in the dialog, then confirm. This removes its original and saved chats for every agent, shared notes and tasks, saved results, progress, project updates, goals, prepared work, and scheduled tasks. Files stored in your profile and files in external workspaces are kept. Deletion cannot be undone.

Deletion is blocked while replies are running in your profile or background tasks are running in that project. Wait for replies to finish, and stop or finish the project’s background tasks before trying again. If another tab has edited the project, use Reload saved version before deleting. Open tabs for the deleted project return to general chat.

Project data lives inside your profile and is included in OE backups. Each profile can normally keep up to 64 spaces, with up to 100 file links and 100 checklist items per space. Conversion preserves older goals and all their reference links even if the General goals project takes the profile beyond these limits. Each agent’s project conversation follows OE’s existing chat-history retention limits.