Start here — your first 10 minutes
Project Desk is a shared work desk for building software with AI. Your chat and connected agents move the work; the desk keeps a truthful picture of it. Here is the shortest path to a useful first action.
- Learn the small mental model below — projects, issues, desks, queues, and who has the ball.
- Connect an AI client to your desk and confirm it can see your work.
- Open a project you can see and take or create one piece of work.
The mental model
Five ideas cover almost everything. A project holds issues (the units of work). You look at your work through desks, and work sits in queues while it waits. At any moment a piece of work has an owner — who has the ball.
The facts that never change, whoever you are:
- Project Desk reflects your work; it does not orchestrate your agents. The desk mirrors the state your chat and connected agents move — it is not a controller that runs them.
- Project Desk is not a scoreboard. It shows where work sits and who is accountable — never per-person productivity metrics, rankings, throughput, or return-rate aggregates.
- Queues read flow before horizon: Active and Attention work is never pushed behind Parked work.
- Every action returns a receipt that names the destination, the recipient, and the resulting item, so you never have to infer success from a version number.
- A generic Attention action goes to your own human by default. You reach a teammate only by naming them on an explicit assignment.
Connect an AI client
Project Desk works through the AI client you already use, such as Claude Desktop, Claude Code, or an OpenAI Apps client. Open your client's connector or integration settings, add Project Desk as a connector, and sign in when prompted. You should then see Project Desk among the client's available tools. To confirm it is working, ask your agent to scan your desk once: a short read of your projects and queues comes back, which means the connection is live. Your agent handles the technical protocol behind this; see For agents.
Work recipes
Short, repeatable ways to do the common things well.
Creating a useful issue
Name the outcome you want, the context someone needs to start, any constraints that bind the work, and what proof will show it is done. Write it so a teammate who was not in your head can pick it up and act. A vague title like "fix the thing" is the common miss: it forces the next person to guess.
Take or update without stealing accountability
You can take unassigned work, and you can update any work you can see. What you should not do is quietly move a teammate's work onto yourself or someone else without saying so. Updating alongside them is healthy; hijacking ownership is the mistake.
Assignment versus Attention
Use explicit assignment to hand a specific piece of work to a specific teammate who can already see that project. Use a generic Attention to flag something for your own human. Assigning to someone who cannot see the project is the mistake: they will never see it land.
Put unattended-safe work in the Agent Queue
The Agent Queue is for scoped, well-specified work an agent can finish without a human watching. Give it a clear outcome, firm boundaries, and a definition of done. Dropping ambiguous or judgment-heavy work there is the mistake: it needs a person, not a queue.
Ask a human on the Attention Desk
When you need a person's judgment or a decision, raise it on the Attention Desk with enough context to act on right away: what you need, why, and what you have already tried. A bare "please look" with no context is the mistake.
Return assigned work with a clear reason
When you cannot safely finish assigned work, send one structured Return into the shared Return Queue, with a clear reason and concrete evidence of where it stalled. Silently dropping the work, or opening a second Return for the same item, is the mistake.
Close work with shipped evidence
Close work by naming what actually shipped and any human gate that still stands between it and done. Closing with no evidence, or leaving a remaining human step unnamed, is the mistake: the next person cannot tell finished from abandoned.
Read a refusal receipt as your next step
A refusal receipt names the specific next step, for example grant access first, or reassign before revoking, not just that something failed. Read it and take that step. Retrying the same action blindly is the mistake.
Teams, roles, and project access
Project Desk has two work roles and a separate account owner. Pick your standing to see only what applies to you — every standing stays reachable.
- Project Desk has two work roles: Team Member (the default) and Team Lead. Every active member can create, update, close, reopen, take, assign, and route work in every project they can see — including the Agent Queue, the Attention Queue, and the shared Return Queue.
- A Team Lead adds team administration — inviting and removing teammates, changing a teammate between Member and Lead, and granting or revoking project access — plus the Team Desk. A role never widens the set of projects a non-owner can see.
- The Account Owner is a separate billing, legal, and account-continuity role — not a third work role. It always resolves as a Team Lead.
- A project appears on your desk when you have a real relationship to it — active membership plus explicit project access. Your role never adds projects to your desk on its own.
Team Member
This is the default standing, and it is a full working role. In any project on your desk you can open work, take it, move it forward, and close it, without anyone's sign-off. You raise an Attention when you need your own human, or pass a piece of work to a teammate who already shares that project. You keep what you finish in your Archive, and when work assigned to you is blocked, you send one Return so it can be picked up cleanly.
- Project Desk has two work roles: Team Member (the default) and Team Lead. Every active member can create, update, close, reopen, take, assign, and route work in every project they can see — including the Agent Queue, the Attention Queue, and the shared Return Queue.
- A project appears on your desk when you have a real relationship to it — active membership plus explicit project access. Your role never adds projects to your desk on its own.
- A Team Member’s desks are Project Desk, Attention Desk, and Archive Desk.
Team Lead
A Team Lead does everything a Team Member does and also looks after the team. You invite and remove teammates, change someone between Member and Lead, and grant or revoke a teammate's access to a project, all from Team Desk. Being a Lead does not add any projects to your own desk: you still see a project only when you hold access to it yourself.
- A Team Lead adds team administration — inviting and removing teammates, changing a teammate between Member and Lead, and granting or revoking project access — plus the Team Desk. A role never widens the set of projects a non-owner can see.
- A Team Lead’s desks are Project Desk, Attention Desk, and Team Desk. Team Desk takes Archive Desk’s place in the navigation, and your Archive lives inside it.
Account Owner
The Account Owner carries the account itself: billing, legal standing, seats, export, and continuity. For everyday work the Owner acts as a Team Lead, with the same team controls. It is a separate responsibility rather than a third work role, so "Owner" names who answers for the account, not a different way of working.
- The Account Owner is a separate billing, legal, and account-continuity role — not a third work role. It always resolves as a Team Lead.
A desk and everything on it belong to the company desk, not to any one person. An Account Owner transfers ownership before leaving; the person who receives it must be an active team member and must re-authenticate to accept. Billing authority and account authority move deliberately and are never silently combined: a Billing Successor is an emergency continuity contact, not an automatic co-owner. During Beta, recovery when an Owner is unavailable is a verified process handled through support. Leaving or being removed from a desk never deletes the company's data.
Connected agents and product boundaries
What Project Desk is — and, just as importantly, what it is not — when you point an agent at it.
- Project Desk stores the desk text sent through its surfaces. It does not open your repositories, terminals, credentials, or local files.
You may notice a versioned PROJECT_DESK.md appear in a connected repository. Your agent writes and updates it; you do not hand-edit it.
For the agent's own technical protocol, see /for-agents.
When something looks wrong
Start from what you observed. Diagnose before you change anything.
What does Project Desk store, and what can it not reach?
Project Desk keeps only the desk text you send through its surfaces. It has no way to open your repositories, terminals, credentials, or local files, so using it exposes nothing on your machine. It reflects your work; it does not reach into where that work lives.
I just joined a team but see no projects.
This is normal, not an error. A Team Lead grants project access after you join, so projects are never chosen for you at the moment of invitation. Ask your Team Lead which projects you should be able to see.
A project I could see is gone.
First tell the two cases apart: a project you were never granted, versus access that was later removed. Either way, your participation history stays in your Archive Desk. If you think access was removed by mistake, ask a Team Lead.
My agent connected, but nothing shows a verified use yet.
Connecting is not the same as making a first call. Ask your agent to scan your desk once, and the use will register. For the technical protocol, see /for-agents.
The Project Desk tools disappeared from my AI client.
Reconnect the same connector rather than creating a renamed duplicate, and check that you are signed in as the right account. See /for-agents for the connection protocol.
I seem to be signed in as the wrong identity, or my session is stale.
Sign out and back in, then confirm which email you are signed in with. One person maps to one account by verified email, so the correct email restores the correct desk.
Work is showing up in the wrong queue.
Move it to the right queue. Queues read flow before horizon, so Active and Attention work is never pushed behind Parked; the piece you moved settles into flow order automatically.
What is the difference between an Attention and an assigned-work Return?
An Attention asks a human to look at something. An assigned-work Return hands work you were assigned, but cannot safely finish, back into the shared Return Queue with a clear reason.
How do the Agent Queue and Attention Queue relate to issue status?
They work oppositely. The Agent Queue is a status: an issue is agent-ready exactly while its status is todo, so moving status to or from todo moves it in or out of the Agent Queue (a walk or proof, or a todo issue carrying an open Attention, appears in the Attention Queue instead). The Attention Queue is not a status: an issue is there because it has an open Attention, whatever its status, so changing it to Backlog or Parked never takes it off. Resolve the Attention to take it off, and the issue keeps its status. Closing the issue resolves its Attentions automatically.
How do I avoid creating duplicate Attention or duplicate Return records?
Check the queue for an existing ask before you create a new one. If one is already there, reuse or update it rather than opening a second.
A revoke was refused because work would be stranded.
The refusal is protecting the work, not blocking you. Reassign or open-handoff the live work first, and the revoke will then succeed.
A receipt said success, but the surface I expected did not change.
Read the receipt: it names the real destination, recipient, and resulting item. The change most likely landed where the receipt says, so do not retry blindly. If the destination still looks wrong, ask a Team Lead or reach /support.
How do I export my data or contact support?
Export from Settings, under Your data. To reach a human, use /support; we aim to reply within a few business days.
What an empty surface means
An empty desk surface is usually healthy, not broken. Here is what each one means and the next legitimate step.
Attention Desk — empty
Nothing needs your attention right now, which is a good sign rather than a problem. When you are ready for more, pick up Active work or open a project from your Project Desk.
Agent Queue — empty
No work is queued for an agent yet. The Agent Queue holds tasks an agent can safely finish on its own, without someone watching over it. When you have one ready, add a scoped, clearly specified task here.
Return Queue — empty
No assigned work has been returned. A teammate sends a Return here when they cannot safely finish something they were given, so an empty queue means nothing is waiting on you.
Project Desk — empty
No projects have been granted to you yet. This is normal right after you join: a Team Lead grants project access once you are on the team, not at the moment you are invited. Ask a Team Lead for access, or connect your AI client and read on while you wait.
Archive Desk — empty
Nothing has shipped yet. When you close work as done it comes to rest here, so this is where you will find what you have completed.
Team Desk — empty
There is no additional team work to show right now, which is expected on a small or new team. As the team takes on more, shared team work and the Archive appear here inside Team Desk.