Chatrooms and workrooms
Choose a room for your work, decide who belongs and manage it as the work changes.
On this page
Choose a chatroom for an ongoing discussion, or a workroom for separate pieces of work. Both give you a place for conversations, files and standing instructions. Decide who can see the room when you create it.
The two kinds
In a chatroom, discussion stays in one conversation, making it useful for quick questions and everyday updates. Your workspace starts with a chatroom called General.
In a workroom, you can keep separate conversations with their own titles and files. Choose one for work with a beginning and an end, such as a report or review.
You need a workroom for a board, one per room, and for schedules that start a new conversation on each run. A schedule posting to an existing conversation can use a chatroom.
Who can see a room
A public room is readable by everyone in the workspace. Find it in Browse rooms, then join it to keep it in your room list.
A private room has a lock beside its name, and only its members can read it. Its owner adds people who need access, including the workspace owner.
Choose visibility carefully: you cannot change it after creating the room.
What an agent can read
The room you call an agent in decides what they can read in Cabane while they answer:
- Called in a public room, they read public rooms.
- Called in a private room or direct message, they also read that room, but no other private room, even one they belong to.
This limits what an agent reads, not what they write. Asked to, an agent can post what they read in a private room into a public one, so think about where you ask them to share it.
Create a room
- Choose Browse rooms → New room.
- Enter a Name and choose Chatroom or Workroom under Type.
- Choose Public or Private under Visibility.
- For a public room, choose a Default agent; the workspace default is preselected when you're allowed to add them. For a private room, choose its starting People and Agents, with an optional Default agent from those agents.
- Choose Create room.
The room's default agent may be selected for a new conversation. Focus the message box and check the recipient above it before sending. To answer in the room, an agent must belong to it; joining doesn't make them read every message.
The Loft
Your Loft, under Rooms, is a private workroom where you're the only person. You choose which agents join you.
An agent's owner decides who can add them through Who adds them to rooms on the agent's page. Your Loft starts with the workspace's default agent only when their owner allows you to add them.
In Room settings, you can change your Loft's description or default agent. You cannot rename, convert, manually archive or transfer it. If you leave the workspace, your Loft is archived; returning gives you a new one.
Manage a private room
When you create a private room, you become its owner and manage its settings and membership. Other members can work there and leave the room.
Choose the participant count to open the members panel. As the owner, choose Add… to add someone, or open a member's menu and choose Remove.
Before leaving the workspace, choose Room settings → Transfer ownership to give your private room to another person who belongs to it. If you leave without transferring ownership, the room is archived and its remaining members cannot reopen it.
From the workspace's Settings → Rooms, opened from the gear at the bottom of the sidebar, the workspace owner can inspect private-room metadata and archive a private room. These controls don't give them access to its contents. An agent's owner can remove their agent from a room, and the workspace owner can remove any agent.
Change or archive a room
Choose Settings from the room's name menu to open Room settings. You can manage a public room as any workspace member; for a private room, you must be its owner.
If you rename a room created through New room, its address changes too. Update links that use the old address.
Converting a room
Find Room type, then choose Convert to workroom or Convert to chatroom. A workroom with a board can't become a chatroom; delete the board first. Before converting, move any schedules that need separate conversations to another workroom.
Converting to a workroom preserves the existing chat as Room chat and reopens earlier conversations. Converting to a chatroom leaves Room chat active, makes the other conversations read-only and withdraws their open questions.
You cannot convert General, Lofts or direct messages.
Archiving a room
In Room settings, hold Archive until the button fills, about a second. A click only shows a reminder to hold. Once the room is archived, the dialog closes and the room leaves the sidebar.
You can't archive General or a Loft. Neither has Archive in its settings.
You can still read an archived room's history, but it accepts no new messages or agent turns: its conversations show "This room is archived." where the message box was. Open questions close. A turn already running may finish, though its reply won't call another agent.
To reopen a room, choose Browse rooms → Show archived, find the room, then choose Room settings → Unarchive. Any workspace member can reopen a public room, while a private room can be reopened only by its owner. Questions closed by archiving stay closed.
Direct messages
A direct room gives its participants one conversation, files and a charter, visible only to them. Its people and agents are fixed when you create it: you cannot add participants later, and people cannot leave.
Agent removal is the exception. An agent's owner or the workspace owner can remove the agent, but cannot add them back.