Managing Employees on the Home Screen

Going to /office takes you to the screen where conversations with the AI employees you’ve hired arrive. This screen is called Home. Home holds both your to-dos (the Inbox) and your employee and team list. On a wide web screen, To do and Employees & teams appear in two columns. When the screen is narrower or an open conversation takes up space, use the [To do | Employees & teams] tabs above the list. When you open Home, you land on the Inbox first, and opening an item there puts its conversation right next to it. This page covers what the Inbox shows, how conversations and side panels open, where to see the full roster, and where to find the pixel-art office floor plan.

Home opens on the Inbox

On web Home, the Inbox and employee list appear side by side or as tabs, depending on screen width. At the top of that card sit the controls you need.

A one-line takeaway for the day (for example “3 done today.”)
A quiet summary line: how many runs are in progress, what’s due next, and a [View scheduled runs] link
Failed N and Attention N chips, when some employees are waiting on you or had a run fail. Click one to jump to the staff table filtered to those employees.
The [+ Hire] button and a [Staff table] link

The card’s body has four sections.

To do: requests that need your action right now, like an approval or an answer
Work reports: cards like yesterday’s daily report or the weekly contract report
Unviewed results: results from your employees you haven’t looked at yet
Viewed results: results you’ve already seen (5 by default, with a Load more option)

At the bottom of the card sit two collapsible sections, [Automatic runs] (recent scheduled and webhook runs) and a mailbox section for arrived mail. Both are collapsed by default.

Looking for the old views? The [Table] [Office] [Board] toggle that used to sit in the header, the card-style Board, and the floor-plan screen are gone. The Inbox is now the first thing you see when you open Home, and the employee table that used to be its home screen has moved to its own screen (/office/table), covered in Seeing the full roster in the staff table below. The pixel-art office has moved to the [Office] tab of the panel opened through Profile menu → Open my manager (see Seeing the pixel-art office below).

On web, press Mark all viewed in Unviewed results to mark results together. With the All filter, this includes results not yet loaded; with an affiliation filter, it applies only to results currently visible.

Each team in the employee list has a # Team chat row and a collapsible 1:1 DM group. Right-click an employee, team name, or team chat row to open its menu.

Clicking an item to open a conversation

Click an Inbox item, a name in the employee and team list, or a team chat button to open that conversation. If the list is hidden, choose Employees & teams in the [To do | Employees & teams] tabs at the top of the left pane.

If your screen is wide enough (roughly laptop width or more), the Inbox slides to the left and the conversation (an employee’s chat or a team chat) opens beside it. There is no separate full-screen chat page anymore.
If it’s too narrow (see One sheet at a time on narrow screens below), the conversation fills the screen instead.

Close the conversation with the × at the right end of its header, or press Esc. Either one takes you back to the Inbox.

Opening a side panel can narrow or hide a pane

While in a conversation, opening something that needs a side panel, a thread, a canvas, a live desktop or web view, an attachment, the task log, settings, or scheduled runs, opens that panel beside the conversation. When your window is wide enough, the left pane (Inbox or the employee and team list), the conversation, and the new panel all fit side by side.

When the window is too narrow to fit everything in one row, the screen makes room on its own. Whatever you’re currently looking at (the conversation, or a panel you just opened) always stays, and the leftmost pane (Inbox or the employee and team list) is the first to hide if there isn’t enough room.

A hidden pane isn’t gone. It stays as a dashed-outline chip on the current-location bar above the conversation, and clicking that chip brings it back (which may push some other pane into hiding to make room).

One sheet at a time on narrow screens

On a screen narrower than 1024px, or in the mobile apps, you see one sheet at a time.

The Inbox fills the screen.
Opening an item makes the conversation fill the screen, with a ← at the top left to get back to the Inbox.
Anything that needs a side panel opens as a sheet layered over the conversation.

Hiring an employee and creating a new team

Click [+ Hire] at the top of the Inbox, and a hiring window lets you choose how to grow:

Hire a team: tell it what you do, and it puts together a team of the employees you need (shown only on accounts with team hiring turned on).
Hire one employee: pick an experienced hire or bring on a new one right away.
Just create an empty team →: makes an empty team without adding anyone.

An organization with no employees yet shows “No employees in this organization yet” and a [Hire] button under its row in the Staff table. Hiring from that button brings the new employee straight into that organization.

Each option is covered in more detail in the quick-hire section of Managing Your AI Employees and in Building Teams of AI Employees.

Right after you hire, the new employee’s chat opens beside the Inbox on a wide screen, or fills the screen on a narrow one. The new hire opens by asking what job they’re taking on. Deciding what to assign happens in that conversation, not before hiring.

To watch a new employee walk in through the office entrance and take a seat, or to see the office briefly “rearranging” after you create a new team, open the [Office] tab of the manager panel.

Seeing the roster in the Employees & teams tab

On a wide web Home screen, the full employee and team roster sits beside the Inbox. On screens with tabs, choose Employees & teams in [To do | Employees & teams] at the top of the left pane.

Under the organization and personal sections, you’ll see pinned employees first, then each team’s chat and its members, and finally employees who don’t belong to a team. Within a team, and among employees with no team, whoever needs your attention floats to the top.
Click a name to open that employee’s conversation. The number next to an avatar is its unread count; a dot marks a pending approval or a failed run.
Click a ”# Team name” row to open that team’s chat.
Click the ⋯ at the right of a row (or right-click it) for a menu with things like pinning or deactivating.
When this list is standing beside a conversation, a [View as table] link at the bottom opens the staff table.

Whether you were last looking at To do or Employees & teams is remembered in this browser, so it stays that way next time.

The current-location bar and Find

Open a conversation with an employee or a team, and a current-location bar appears above it. When your window is wide enough it sits inside the header; on a narrower window it sits in its own row just below the header.

The leftmost chip shows how you got to this conversation (from a to-do, from Employees & teams, and so on). Click it to jump straight to another item in the same list, or another employee on the same team.
Next comes the name of the employee or team you’re talking to. Click it to switch to a pinned employee, an employee who needs attention, or another team.
In a one-on-one conversation, a chip next to the name shows which workspace you’re viewing; click it to switch workspaces.
On the right, small chips list whatever panels you have open. A hidden pane shows as a dashed-outline chip; click it to bring it back. [+ Open a view] opens a new panel.

Press ⌘K (Windows: Ctrl+K) anywhere to open the Find window. It searches employees and teams, things to do or results to review, screens you can open in the current conversation, and actions like hiring, creating a team, or reporting an issue, all from one box. The same window opens from the [Find] button in the header.

Click the ? button in the header for a menu with Find and Report an issue. The bug-report icon that used to sit at the bottom of the rail moved here.

Seeing the full roster in the staff table

To see all your employees at a glance in one screen, open the staff table (/office/table). On the Inbox home screen, click [Staff table] at the top of the card; when the employee and team list is standing beside a conversation, click [View as table] at the bottom of that list. To get back to the Inbox from the table, click [Back to inbox] in the table’s toolbar (on mobile, [List]).

The table’s top row (its title row) has:

The Employees title and a summary (for example “5 employees · 4 active”)
Awaiting approval N and Failed N chips. Click one to show only those employees; click again to clear it.
A search box that looks through conversations, tasks, and canvases as well as employee names
Sort: Needs attention, Recent, By Name, Custom

Inside the table, teams sit under the organization and personal sections, and each employee gets one row under their team. A team’s header row shows a 7-day performance summary and a [Team Chat →] link.

Choosing which columns to show

At first you see these columns: Employee · Status · Last run · Next run · 7d runs · Success · Approvals · expired · 7d SU · Note. The Status column collects whatever needs your attention:

A status badge: Awaiting approval, Run failed, or Paused
Warning signals: failures in a row, halted because a request expired, skill errors, out of memory, out of disk space, idle for a while, and so on

If nothing shows, that employee doesn’t need anything from you right now.

To see more, click the [+] button at the far end of the table’s header row. A Visible columns list opens, where you can turn each of these on or off:

Affiliation, AI performance tier, Skills · Tools, Done
The columns that start on (Status, Last run, Next run, 7d runs, Success, Approvals · expired, 7d SU, Note)

Reset to default in the same list brings back the starting columns. The Employee column can’t be turned off. Your choice is saved in the browser you’re using, so another device or another browser needs its own choice. A browser where you picked columns before keeps that choice. Press Reset to default to see the new default columns.

Reading the numbers in the table

Next run shows the time left from now, such as “in 15 hours”. Hover to see the exact time.
Success shows only once at least 5 runs have been judged. Below that it shows ”-”, so one or two runs don’t look bigger than they are.
On a wide screen, team and organization rows show that group’s totals under the number columns (7d runs, Success, Done, Approvals · expired, 7d SU). Done, success rate, expired, and SU values for columns you’ve turned off appear in one line next to the team name. On a narrow screen they appear only in that one line.
On a narrow screen such as a phone, swipe the table sideways to see the rest of the columns. The Employee column and team names stay on the left while you swipe.

Writing a note next to an employee

The Note column holds a one-line note you want to keep about that employee, such as “Handles month-end closing” or “Also covering client B from next week”.

In an empty Note cell, Add note appears when you hover over the row (on a touch screen it’s always shown). Click it to type right there.
Press Enter or click outside the cell to save, or Esc to cancel. Clearing the text and saving removes the note.
A note can be up to 2,000 characters. The table shows one line; hover to see the whole note.
Notes are for people. The AI employee doesn’t read them, so use the chat or Work setup to tell an employee how to work.
Each employee has one note, shared with everyone who can see that employee (for an organization’s employee, the organization’s members). It shows the same on every device.

Clicking an employee in the table to chat right away

Click an employee’s row and a light chat pane opens to the right of the table. The [Open the full conversation] button in the pane’s header moves that same conversation beside the Inbox on a wide screen, or fills the screen on a narrow one, and you can drag the pane’s edge to resize it. A team header’s [Team Chat →] link opens the team chat by the same rule.

Drag an employee’s row onto another team to move them there (on a touch screen, grab the handle at the left of the row or the avatar). See Building Teams of AI Employees for details.

The list order doesn’t shift while you’re looking at it

When you sort by Needs attention or Recent, the order stays put for as long as the list is on screen. Opening a chat to clear an unread flag, or a new approval request coming in, only changes a badge or status marker. Nobody’s spot in the list moves.

The order is only recalculated when you open the screen fresh, switch the sort option, or change your search term or filter. The staff table and the employee and team list in the left pane (the sidebar list on mobile) follow the same rule.

What’s below the table

Scheduled run timeline: one row per employee, showing when each one ran in the last 24 hours and when it’s due to run next. It’s collapsed by default; click its title (Scheduled run timeline) to expand it. The expanded state is remembered in this browser. See Setting Up Scheduled Runs for details.
Recommendation row: a scrolling row of cards introducing official employee templates and skills. Tap a card to open that item’s detail screen and take a look, or install it. The row shows the same cards, in the same order, on web, iOS, and Android. The server, not the screen, decides what to recommend, so you see the same lineup on any device the same day, and reopening the screen doesn’t shuffle the cards.

Getting back to the sidebar list on mobile

On mobile web, the top of the Inbox has a [List] button. Tapping it takes you out of the Inbox to the sidebar’s employee list. This choice is remembered, so the next time you open it, you land on the list again.

To get back to the Inbox from the list, tap the [Home] link near the top of the list screen. It takes you straight back to the Inbox.

Opening scheduled runs and settings from inside team chat

To adjust a team’s scheduled runs or settings, open them as a side panel right from that team’s chat, the same way described in Opening a side panel folds the Inbox above: the Inbox folds into a narrow column beside it. The screen that shows the team’s structure as a diagram still lives on its own page. See Building Teams of AI Employees for details.

The pixel-art office lives in the manager panel’s [Office] tab

On the web, choose Profile menu → Open my manager, then select [Office] from the [Office] | [Manager] tabs at the top of the panel to watch your employees at work. The manager button at the bottom right has been removed, but the manager panel and its Office tab are still available.

You can open it from any screen, not just Home.
Opened from a team chat, it shows only that team’s employees. While the team is working, Working on now (up to 3 recent steps) appears below the picture. Anywhere else, it shows the whole office.
Drag the panel’s top-left corner to resize it (desktop).
The “Open full screen” button that goes to the manager’s full-screen chat is only on the [Manager] tab. To see the office bigger, drag the corner to enlarge the panel.
If you’re viewing a team chat and that team starts working, the [Office] tab can open on its own (desktop). Once you close it, it won’t open on its own again for that team.

Open my manager appears on accounts with the manager feature enabled. The panel’s [Office] tab also needs the office feature to be enabled. This menu path is for the web; keep using the existing entry points in the mobile apps.

Clicking a character to open their card

In the whole-office view, clicking an employee’s character opens their info card: portrait, name, team, current status, plus (while working) the tool it’s running, its next scheduled run, and its most recent task. Hover shows it as a preview (recent work as a single line); clicking or tapping pins the card open so you can use the buttons, and recent work expands into a list.

[Open chat] (or [Go approve] / [Go answer] instead, if an approval or a question is waiting): opens the conversation beside the Inbox on a wide screen, or filling the screen on a narrow one. When it fills the screen, the manager panel closes.
Recent work: a pinned card lists up to 3 of that employee’s most recent tasks. Each entry shows a status dot, a one-line summary, and a time (“2 hours ago” or “In progress”). It pulls together everything the employee has handled, including work that came in from outside Home through Slack or the Work portal. Clicking an entry jumps to the exact point in the conversation where that task happened. Entries from channels with no web chat screen (Slack, the Work portal, and so on) show up for reference only and aren’t clickable.
[View full task log →]: opens that employee’s chat with the task log tab showing.
[Set up a scheduled run]: may appear on the card of an employee with no work in the last 7 days. It takes you to that employee’s Automatic runs screen.

Clicking the manager’s character doesn’t leave the screen. It switches the panel to the [Manager] tab.

When the office is opened from a team chat, cards are for information only. There are no chat or navigation buttons, so you don’t get pulled away from the team chat you’re in.

What you’ll find in the office picture

Status guide: click the ? button at the bottom right of the office to see what each status means. The single most important distinction: “On standby” is a normal state. It means the employee is at their desk waiting for the next job, a normal, around-the-clock ready state that needs no action from you. The only status that calls for action is “No work assigned.”
Summary chips: counts like “3 working” or “1 awaiting response” at the top. Clicking one cycles the view through the employees in that status, one at a time.
Find an employee (whole office): the [Find] button at the left of the top row expands into a name search box. Type a name and press Enter to cycle through matching employees.
Zoom and fit to view: +/− buttons zoom in and out, and [Fit to view] resets so every employee fits on screen. Zoom is continuous, not stepped. Pinch with two fingers on a trackpad or phone and the zoom level tracks your fingers, then redraws sharply the moment you let go.
Replay last 24 hours: a button at the bottom left plays back the last 24 hours of office activity as a fast-forward replay. You can play/pause, change speed, and scrub the timeline, and the time currently being replayed is shown alongside it. The employee list doesn’t update live while replaying; the close button returns you to the live view at any time. Pinning a card during replay still shows recent work as a single line instead of the list. The list is “right now” data, and mixing it into a past scene would talk about two different points in time at once.
Click a team nameplate to jump to team chat (whole office): each team’s carpet area has a nameplate with the team’s name. Clicking it opens that team’s chat (skipping the info card). If an employee happens to be standing on the nameplate, the employee takes priority and their card opens instead.
Zone labels: floor labels like Reception, Sleep Room, Lobby, Independent Employees, and Pantry help you get your bearings on which part of the office you’re looking at.
Name tags: normally no names are shown; a name tag only appears above the one employee you’re hovering over or have selected. Everyone else’s status is shown by the colored ring at their feet.
Speech bubbles and wait badges: an employee with an unread conversation gets a ”…” speech bubble over their head, so you can tell who has news at a glance. An employee waiting on your approval or answer gets the same bubble, with a small badge on its corner showing what it’s waiting on: an exclamation mark for a pending approval, a question mark for a pending answer. If both are true at once, you still only see one bubble.

The mobile apps show the same thing

The iOS and Android apps show the same pixel-art office, including the status guide, employee cards, summary chips, zoom, last-24-hours replay, and the speech bubbles and wait badges.

Controls work through the app’s own entry points, though. The app’s office screen has no [Hire], [New team], or [Find]; you use the app’s list and board screens for those. Tapping an employee opens the app’s full-screen conversation directly.

There’s one difference from the web, too. In portrait orientation the office shrinks to fit the screen’s width, leaving empty space above and below it, and that space is filled with the same recommendation row shown below the staff table on the web. Turn the phone sideways, or when there’s nothing to recommend, and this row disappears.

Advanced

This section isn’t needed for everyday use. Read it only if a Home address or panel behaves unexpectedly, or you want the exact rules behind status and zone labels.

Default landing rules

/office renders nothing of its own. It’s a junction that forwards you to the Inbox (/office/inbox), on desktop and mobile web alike.
The old view address /office/canvas (floor plan) now leads to the Inbox home (/office/inbox), and /office/board (Board) leads to the staff table (/office/table). Any chat, search, or filter options at the end of the address are kept, so saved bookmarks and notification links keep working.
Even older addresses (/agents, /agents/office) forward automatically too.
Before you’ve hired anyone, you stay on the getting-started screen instead of the Inbox. On mobile, if you’ve chosen [List] before, you stay on the sidebar list.
The entry point for this screen in the iOS and Android apps goes straight to the app’s own pixel-art office. The web changes don’t affect it.
Notification, mail links, and app deep links still use /agents/… addresses. That address now renders “Inbox plus conversation.”

When the conversation opens beside the Inbox

The conversation opens beside the Inbox when your browser window is roughly 1024px wide or more. If it isn’t (on a narrow screen like mobile), an item opening takes you to a full-screen conversation instead. This same width rule is shared by the chat pane opened from the staff table.

The order-freezing rule

Order-freezing only applies to the “Needs attention” and “Recent” sort options. Those two derive their ranking from values that change as you use the app (unread status, a pending wait, last activity), and while the list is on screen, it’s frozen to whatever those values were the first time you saw it. “By Name” and “Custom” (drag-to-reorder) aren’t frozen, because for those the order is the value you set. Renaming an employee or dragging a new position takes effect immediately.

This applies equally to the staff table and to the employee and team list in the left pane (the mobile list).

How column choices are saved

Your column choice is saved in browser storage. It isn’t tied to your account, so a different account signed in on the same browser sees the same columns, and it doesn’t sync to other devices.
Columns always appear in a fixed order (Status, Last run, Affiliation, Model, Skills · Tools, Next run, 7d runs, Success, Done, Approvals · expired, 7d SU, Note), not in the order you turned them on.
Turning every column off leaves a table with only the Employee column. That’s saved as a choice too.
Where browser storage isn’t available (a private window, for example), you get the default columns.

Left-pane tab memory and pane-hiding order

Which tab you last viewed, To do or Employees & teams, is remembered in browser storage, so it stays that way next time. One exception: partway through onboarding into a team you hired as a group, the pane switches to Employees & teams once on its own to surface that guidance (after that, it follows whatever you pick).

When panes don’t all fit, they hide in a fixed order: the left pane (To do / Employees & teams) → the task list → the main conversation → thread → live view → docs/settings. The main conversation always stays, and so does whichever pane currently has focus (the one you just opened or expanded), regardless of width. When space runs short, panes hide starting with the one furthest from focus, and among those, the left pane goes first. A panel the manager opens on its own, if it would have pushed out something you were looking at, stays hidden until you expand it yourself.

Details of the manager panel’s [Office] tab

The [Office] tab only appears on accounts with the office feature turned on. Otherwise the panel has only the manager conversation.
The run-count badge on the [Office] tab only appears while you’re viewing a team chat, and it means how many runs are going in that team right now. In the whole-office view, the summary chips at the top of the office do that job.
It opens on its own when all of these are true: you’re on desktop, you’re viewing that team’s chat, the team’s runs go from 0 to 1 or more, the panel is closed, and you haven’t closed the office for that team during this session. It won’t open over a consent dialog or the getting-started guide.
If you move to another screen while the Office tab is showing, the tab doesn’t switch back to Manager. Only what it shows changes to match the new screen (that team in a team chat, the whole office otherwise).
The resize handle only appears on desktop while the [Office] tab is showing. Arrow keys fine-tune the size, and double-clicking or pressing Esc resets it to the default size.
A card’s “Recent work” entries and “View full task log” always jump to the exact point in the conversation regardless of screen width, because on a narrow screen that means the full-screen layout that supports it.

The full list of statuses

These are the statuses an employee can be in on the floor plan (“Walking” is plain movement and isn’t included in the status guide).

Status	Meaning
Stationed at reception	The manager (AI manager) is at reception waiting for new requests
Working	Currently running a user request or task
On a call (awaiting response)	Waiting for the user’s approval or answer
Team board conversation	Talking with another employee via mention
Tidying up	Just finished a task and is tidying up the desk
On standby at desk	Waiting at their own desk for the next job. Around-the-clock, and a normal state
Checking references	Stepping away briefly to check references, then back to the desk
No work assigned	Paused, hasn’t started yet, or no work in the last 7 days. The only status that calls for action
Sleeping	Running auto memory cleanup

Where zone labels appear

Reception, Sleep Room, Lobby, Independent Employees, and Pantry are fixed floor labels, not clickable elements. They’re there purely to help you get your bearings.

The five summary-chip buckets

Working / Awaiting response / On standby / No work assigned / Sleeping, five in total, and a bucket with 0 people isn’t shown. The summary chips don’t appear at all during replay. Showing “right now” counts alongside a scene from the past would mix up two different points in time.

Why only one name tag shows at a time

Name tags used to always be visible for everyone, but as headcount grew they started overlapping and became hard to read. Now only the employee you’re currently hovering over or have selected gets a name tag; everyone else’s status is shown only by the colored ring at their feet.

What the “Recent work” list on employee cards covers

It’s only fetched when a card is pinned on the live view, not on a hover preview and not during the 24-hour replay, both of which just show the single-line summary instead (fetching it on hover too would fire one request per employee as you sweep your mouse around).
It shows up to 3 tasks updated in the last 30 days, most recent first. This is the same window, ordering, and label rule (60-character summary) as the single line that’s always shown above the desk.
Things that just open a conversation without real work behind them (like a self check-in that ended with nothing to do) don’t appear here, same as in the single-line summary.
The list combines every channel of work that employee has handled, not just regular conversations in Home, including Slack and the Work portal. Only entries with a web chat screen are clickable.
In an embedded view (e.g. an iframe), the list is visible but entries aren’t clickable. It’s read-only there.

Limits of the 24-hour replay

The replay window is fixed at the last 24 hours. If there’s nothing to replay in that window, it shows “No activity in the last 24 hours.” If there’s enough history that the start of the window gets cut off, a “Showing part of the history” notice appears alongside it.

When the bubble appears, and how the badge is decided

There are three things that put up a bubble: an unread conversation, a pending approval or answer, and a conversation with another employee via mention (team board conversation). They’re checked in order, so only one bubble ever shows even when more than one is true. An unread conversation or a pending wait takes priority and shows the ”…” bubble; the team board conversation only gets its own shape (a bubble with a text icon inside) when neither of those applies. Sleeping employees never get a bubble, since lying down leaves no anchor point for one.

The corner badge only appears when the bubble is up because of a pending wait. An unread conversation on its own shows the bubble with no badge. The badge is filled in the same amber used for the status ring at an employee’s feet.

Unread status here uses the same rule as the unread markers in the table and the Inbox: messages the employee sent that you haven’t opened yet. Using one shared calculation on the server, instead of a separate check per screen, is what keeps an employee from showing unread in one place and not in another.

How the recommendation row is put together

Recommended cards are drawn from official employee templates and skills. The order isn’t random. It’s a fixed order derived from you and today’s date, so you see the same row on any device the same day, and reopening the screen doesn’t reshuffle it. A new order is picked the next day. If there’s nothing to recommend, the row doesn’t appear at all.

Working Across Workspaces: the concept behind the recent work and progress shown on employee cards
Building Teams of AI Employees: building team structure and dragging employees between teams
Managing Your AI Employees: hiring, per-employee settings, pausing, checking cost