Sidebar
What lives in the space sidebar - pinned items, topics, members, and the tools at the bottom.
The sidebar is your map of a space: the left-hand column of every space and one of the first things to get your bearings with. Everything in it is organized around the space's topics, so learning the sidebar is really learning how a space is arranged.
It is your home base for navigation, organized top to bottom around those topics - the channel-like groups that decide who can see what.
At the top of the sidebar is a Search pill. Click it (or press Cmd+K) to open the command palette, which jumps you to any thread, note, node, view, canvas, file, or person in the space.
Pinned
Anything you pin - a thread, note, view, or canvas - stays in the Pinned section at the top for one-click access. Pin an item from its row's context menu (right-click, or the ⋯ button) with Pin; the same menu unpins it. Pins are personal: yours are yours alone. Drag the pinned rows to reorder them - the order is saved to your account, so it follows you across devices.
If you lose access to something you pinned (for example, a topic you were removed from), the pin doesn't leak its contents. It collapses to a masked placeholder with only a remove action, so you can clear it out.
Admins can also pin items space-wide with Pin to space in the same row menu. Those pins appear inside the space section below and are visible to everyone; only admins can add or remove them.
The space and its topics
Below Pinned sits the space, headed by its icon, color, and name. Under it are the topics you belong to, each on its own row:
- misc is always first - the catch-all for anything shared with the space but not filed under a named topic. It carries no #, because it isn't a topic: it's the space's remainder. Its pane is a single chronological stream, and the row itself stays quiet - no unread count, no dot - so your attention stays on the people and topics that address you directly. Items in misc are still marked as new since your last visit inside the pane. In a space where you're the only member there's no crowd to stay quiet for, so misc badges and notifies like any topic - nothing new can slip by unseen.
- Every topic row is prefixed with a #. A lock replaces the # on a closed topic, and a globe marks a topic with public web access on.
- Unread topics show a count badge. When one of those unread threads @mentions you, the topic shows a pulsing @ badge in place of the count, so the thing addressed to you stands out from ordinary traffic.
- When unread rows are scrolled out of view, an indicator points you up or down to them.
Clicking a topic opens its extension pane - a second, resizable sidebar column that lists that topic's threads, notes, canvases, and views without navigating away from what's open in the main panel. When the topic has unread activity, the pane opens focused on just the unread items, split under per-day dividers (Today, Yesterday, then weekday or date), with a Show all items button at the bottom that reveals the full list for the rest of that session. The pane has its own header (privacy, members, search, and a New chat button) and its width persists. Click an item to open it in the main panel; close the pane with its X, by clicking the active topic again, or with Escape.
Drag a topic row to reorder the topics under the space; the order is saved to your account and stays the same on every device.
Below your topics, an open topic you've been pulled into - because one of its threads reached you - appears as a dimmed preview row you haven't joined. Hover it to Join topic, or Hide it from the row's menu if you'd rather not see it; hiding is undoable from the toast. A hidden preview comes back only when you're deliberately pulled in again - by joining the topic, by being added to one of its threads, or by being @-mentioned in one.
A quieter Browse topics row lets you discover and join topics you're not in yet. In a space with no topics yet, admins get Create a topic there instead, which opens the new-topic dialog directly. To learn how topics gate access, see Topics.
Everything you can reach has exactly one home in the sidebar: a topic row you can see, or - when it isn't filed anywhere you can see - a member row, your You row, or misc. A thread filed only into a topic you're not in doesn't disappear; it surfaces under the people you share it with.
All unread
The All unread row near the top gathers everything unread across the space in one place, so you can clear your backlog without hunting through topics. Opening it lists every unread thread, led by a Clear all unread button that marks them all as read in one go. A reaction someone leaves on your message counts as unread too, and stops counting if they take it back.
To skip the list entirely, hover the row and click the arrow that appears - it opens the most recent unread conversation directly. Cmd+U does the same from the keyboard, and because each opened thread is marked read, pressing it repeatedly walks you through your unreads one by one.
The row badges like a topic row does: a count normally, and the @ badge when anything in that backlog mentions you.
Throughout the sidebar, bold text means unread - never "currently open". A selected row is marked by its fill instead, so opening an unread conversation visibly turns it from bold to normal.
Members
The Members section lists the people and agents you're talking with, one row each. At its top is your personal home row, labelled You & Naumu and shown with your avatar paired with Naumu's - your stable place for solo items: your chats with just Naumu's AI plus any notes, canvases, and views only you own. Below it, a row appears for every member - human or agent - you share an unfiled conversation with. Expanding a member's row lists the unfiled threads you're both in, group chats included, so one thread can appear under more than one member, alongside the notes, canvases, and views you both take part in. Rows come and go on their own: filing a thread into a topic moves it out of the member view, and when the last shared thread is filed the row disappears.
A member row's badge counts unread conversations, not unread messages - the same unit as the topic rows and the All unread row above it, so the numbers in the column always add up.
Privacy is not a section here - it's a property of each thread. A conversation with a person is visible to the space by default, and a private one is marked with a chip on its row. Drag member rows to reorder them; the order follows you across devices.
An Add members row at the bottom is where a space grows. It opens a picker of everyone already in the space - people and agents alike - so you can start a chat with any of them and keep their row around before a conversation exists. From the same place you can invite people by email and create an AI agent, without a detour through settings; a new agent pins itself as a member row as soon as it exists. Inviting and agent creation follow your permissions in the space.
Reminders
Reminders from your scheduled tasks surface in the sidebar as ordinary rows, marked with a bell icon so a fired reminder is easy to spot.
The bottom cluster
Pinned to the bottom of the sidebar are three tools:
Files & media
Files & media is a single library that merges the space's notes, views, canvases, and uploaded files into one browsable list. Open it from Explore, or from the command palette.
- Filter chips across the top narrow to one type - notes, views, canvases, or uploads - each with a live count.
- A sort dropdown and a grid/list toggle control the layout; your grid-or-list choice is remembered.
- + New creates a note, view, or canvas, or uploads a file.
- Cards carry previews: note snippets, image thumbnails, and canvas wireframes.
The header shows the space's name.
On mobile
On a phone, the sidebar becomes a nav drawer that mirrors the same structure - Pinned, then the space's topics, then Members. Tapping a topic opens its page inside the drawer, sliding in from the side; swipe back to return to the list.
Related
- Topics - the channel-like groups the sidebar is built around.
- Spaces - the workspace the sidebar navigates.
- Search - the command palette behind the sidebar search pill.
- Scheduled tasks - where the reminders in your sidebar come from.
- Members & sharing - who can see which items in the first place.