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A workspace is where a piece of work lives. Its chats, notebooks, and files sit together in one folder, and everything in it runs on the same machine. A notebook the agent writes in one chat is right there for the next chat, and for anyone you share the workspace with.

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Main and project workspaces

There are two kinds of workspace.
  • Main. Every member has one. It is private to you until you share it, and it cannot be renamed or deleted. Chats you start from Slack land here.
  • Project workspaces. Create one for each piece of work you want to keep together, such as an analysis, a pipeline fix, or a recurring report.

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Create a workspace

1

Open the dialog

Click Chat in the sidebar, then New workspace at the top of the workspace list.
2

Name it

Enter a Name.
3

Choose where it runs

If your organization has machines you can use, pick one under Run on. Otherwise it runs on Standard, Alkera’s shared compute. You can move it later.
4

Create

Click Create.

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The workspace list

The sidebar on the Chat page lists your workspaces, with Main first, then your chats, then everything Shared with me. Each workspace row shows:
  • An unread count.
  • A status dot whenever the workspace is doing something, such as starting, working, or waiting on you.
  • A Chat button to start a new chat in that workspace.
  • A ⋮ menu with Open, Mark all as read, Rename, Share…, and Delete.
Expand a workspace to see its chats. A chat that needs you shows Needs your answer.

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The workspace page

Open a workspace to see its page. It shows:
  • The workspace’s status and the machine it runs on.
  • Here now: who is in the workspace, which chat each person is in, and which chats have the agent working.
  • Its chats, with New chat.
  • Open Files, which opens the workspace’s folder.
Opening the page wakes the workspace.

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Sleep and wake

Chats and workspaces sleep when nobody is using them, so they do not hold a machine’s memory while idle. They wake on their own when someone comes back. You never start or stop them yourself. Each chat sleeps and wakes on its own. A workspace is awake while any of its chats is awake or someone has it open, and goes to sleep once all of them sleep.

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When a chat sleeps

A chat goes to sleep after 24 hours with no activity. Activity is anything that touches the chat: a message, an answer to a question, someone opening it or being in it, the agent producing output, or an edit to the chat’s files. These keep a chat awake, however long they take:
  • The agent is working on a turn.
  • A message is queued behind the current turn.
  • The agent asked a question and is waiting for your answer.
  • A background job or another process is still running on the machine.
If a machine runs short of memory, the chat that has gone longest without use goes to sleep early. A chat that is working, or waiting on you, is never put to sleep early.

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What sleep keeps and what it clears

When a chat sleeps, Alkera saves every file in its folder to Files, including large files, then clears the folder from the machine. See Where workspace files live. When you come back, re-run your notebook to restore its variables. Ask the agent to reinstall anything it installed from the shell, or add those packages to the notebook environment so they come back on their own.

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What wakes a chat

  • Opening the chat, if you can edit it.
  • Sending a message or answering a question, including from Slack.
  • Opening the workspace, which wakes its most recently active chat.
  • Opening a notebook or running a cell.
Waking copies the chat’s folder from Files back onto the machine. It usually takes a few seconds. If the workspace runs on an org machine that is stopped, waking starts the machine first, which takes a minute or two. A message you send while the chat wakes is sent as soon as it is ready.

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Status

If a chat’s turn is interrupted, for example because its machine was stopped, the chat says Stopped and why. Send a message to continue.

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When its machine is gone

A workspace remembers its machine. If that machine is deleted, the workspace falls back to Standard.

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Sharing

Share a workspace to work on it together. Sharing a workspace shares all of its chats, notebooks, and files. Open the workspace’s ⋮ menu and choose Share…. Under Add people and teams, enter a name, an email, or a team, pick their access, and click Share. Copy link copies a link to the workspace. The same access levels apply to files and folders.
Sharing a workspace lends your data connections. People you share a workspace with who have edit access can query data through your connections from its chats.
Inside a workspace, you share the workspace rather than a single chat. Model usage is billed to whoever sends each message.

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Delete a workspace

Open the workspace’s ⋮ menu and choose Delete. Its chats and files move to the trash, where you can restore them for 30 days. The owner and people with Full access can delete a workspace.

Chats

Working with the agent inside a workspace.

Machines

Standard compute, org machines, and moving a workspace.