Projects

A project keeps chats about one piece of work together with what Strata should know for all of them: instructions it follows in every chat of the project, and knowledge, files and notes it reads. Start a chat in a project and Strata already knows the brief; you don't paste it again.

Projects is in the sidebar, beside Library and Agents.

#Making a project

On Projects, choose New project. The window asks:

• What are you working on? The project's name.
• What are you trying to achieve? The goal, who it is for and what a good result looks like. It becomes the project's description, which you can change later.
• Instructions, if you like: write them, or choose Write them from the goal and Strata drafts them from the name and the goal, in your language, for you to read and change. The draft comes from your organization's own model, under its data policy, and nothing is kept unless you make the project.
• Context, if you like: Add context adds files (or drop them on the window), text you paste, or files Strata already made for you, From your Library. A picture, a recording or an archive stays in the list with the reason it cannot be read, and is not added.
• Who can use it: Only you, or Everyone in your organization when your organization lets projects be shared. You can add people, groups and roles from the project once it is made.

Create project makes it and opens its page, where the files you added go up, each with its progress. A project's page has:

• its name and description, which you can change in place;
• a prompt box: what you ask there starts a new chat in the project;
• your chats in the project, newest first;
• Knowledge, beside the chats (under them on a phone): the project's Instructions and its Files.

#Instructions

Edit under Instructions and write what Strata should always do in this project: who the work is for, the terms to use, the format to answer in, what to leave out. They apply to every chat in the project, after your organization's own rules and before your own custom instructions.

#Knowledge

Add, beside the project's files, opens one menu: Add files, Add text and From your Library, as when you make a project, and then the places you can add a file from, each only when you can use it:

• Add from OneDrive lists the files you used recently, in OneDrive or SharePoint, and searches your OneDrive; tick as many as you like.
• Add from Google Drive opens Google's own picker, when your organization has Google Drive and you have connected it. Strata can read only the files you pick there.
• Add a web page asks for its address. Your organization's rules for sites apply (a site it blocks, or one not on its list, is refused), and addresses inside a private network are refused.
• Add from a connector, for each connector you can use that offers files to read (MCP resources). A connector that only offers actions has nothing to add.

Strata reads each one with your own access, never anyone else's, and keeps its text as it keeps an upload's, under the same limits. A file added this way says where it came from and when it was read (From OneDrive · Read 2 hours ago). Read it again on its row (the circling arrows) reads it again, with the access of whoever presses it; when nothing changed, Strata says the file is up to date and keeps it as it was.

Add files uploads documents to the project, up to 20 MB each: PDF, Word (.doc and RTF too), OpenDocument, Excel, PowerPoint, CSV, text, Markdown, JSON, XML, SQL, logs, code, notebooks, web pages, books and e-mail. Strata keeps the text of each one (up to 200,000 characters a file), so a file with no text in it, such as a picture, a scan or a recording, is not taken, nor is a .zip. Add text keeps a note you paste in as a file of its own. A project holds up to 100 files and 2,000,000 characters of text, and every chat in it can use them.

The bar under Files shows how much the project holds:

• Up to about 60,000 characters of text, Strata reads all of it with every message in the project.
• Past that, Strata searches the project's files for the passages each message needs, and can search them again while it answers. Nothing is left out; the files are searched rather than read whole.

Removing a file takes it out of the project at once.

An answer can join the knowledge from the chat it was written in: under an answer in a chat of the project, Add to project context (the folder among the answer's buttons) saves it to the project as a Markdown file named for the chat and the day, with the chat's title and then the answer. The button becomes a tick, and every chat in the project can use the answer from then on. It is there for those who can change the project, and not for an answer your organization's rules kept out of the chat's record.

#The project's colour

A project wears a colour: on its page before its name, on its card on Projects, and on its cube in the sidebar. Those who can change the project press the tile before its name and choose No colour or one of eight; everyone who can open the project sees the same colour. Changing it does not move the project up the list.

#Chats in a project

A chat started from the project's page belongs to the project: its name shows before the chat's title, and the name opens the project. To move any chat into a project, or out of one, choose Move to project… in the chat's menu (its title, or the ⋮ beside it in the sidebar).

Chats in a project stay yours: sharing a project shares its instructions and knowledge, never your chats in it. To show someone a chat, share the chat.

The project's memory. With Look things up in your past chats on (Settings › Privacy), a chat in a project draws on your earlier chats in the same project: when you refer to earlier work, Strata looks through your chats in this project, not the rest of your chats. It looks further only when you clearly mean a conversation outside the project, and then says so.

A starred project is a folder in the sidebar: press its cube to see your chats in it, hanging from a gray line, and again to fold them away. See The Strata sidebar.

#Sharing a project

Share on a project's page decides who can use it:

• Only you (the default);
• Everyone in the organization, who can use it, or also edit it;
• Specific people, groups and roles, each of whom can use it or also edit it.

People who can use a project see its instructions and knowledge and start their own chats in it. People who can edit it also change its name, description, instructions, files and who it is shared with. Only the owner archives or deletes it, and can make another member its owner.

Projects lists Yours, Shared with you, Organization (shared with everyone), Starred and Archived.

If you lose access to a project, its chats stay yours, without the project's instructions and knowledge.

#Archiving and deleting

Archive keeps a project out of the way (under Archived) until you restore it; while it is archived it can be read but not changed, and no new chat starts in it. Delete removes it: its chats move out of it and stay their owners' chats, and its files are deleted, unless a legal hold keeps them.

#For administrators

Organization settings› then Data and privacy› then Projects and sharing:

Project names, descriptions, instructions and the text of their files are encrypted with your organization's key, as chat titles are. Creating and deleting a project, changing who it is shared with, handing it to a new owner, and adding, reading again or removing knowledge (with where a file came from) are recorded in the audit log. The organization's data export and deletion include projects.