Use projects to bundle files and chats

A project is what you reach for the second time you find yourself pasting the same context into a chat. It bundles files, instructions, and chats around one body of work — a customer, a launch, a long investigation — so every new conversation starts with the context already loaded. This walk takes a fresh project from "I keep re-uploading the same brief" to "every chat inside this project already knows the brief" on one instance.

You need a Member role (the floor for creating projects) and three or four files you keep referencing. The conceptual side lives in Project concepts; this walk is the end-to-end mechanic.

Before you begin

Confirm two things. Your role is at least Member — project creation is gated to Member and above. You have three to four files that recur across the chats you have been having — a brief, a transcript, a price list, a policy. Those become the project's working set.

Step 1 — Create the project

The project is the container the rest of the pieces live in. Open Projects > New project and set:

• Name — Acme account (or whatever names the body of work)
• Description — one sentence on what the project is for
• Members — leave it private for now; you can add teammates after the first chat works

Save. The project appears in the sidebar; clicking it opens an empty project view with tabs for Files, Threads, Agents, and Instructions.

Step 2 — Upload the files once

The project's files are visible to every chat inside the project, so this upload happens once and pays back on every later chat. Open the Files tab and drag in the three or four files you confirmed in the prerequisites.

Each file lands in the project's storage and indexes the same way a knowledge-base document does. Once the status is Ready, the files are reachable by any chat started inside the project.

Step 3 — Add project instructions

Project instructions frame every chat in the project. They compose with the agent's own instructions: the project frames the work, the agent frames the reply. Open the Instructions tab and set:

You are working on the Acme account. The contract and the call notes in the Files tab are the source of truth; cite them when you make a claim. The customer's voice is conservative — drafts should not promise dates we have not confirmed.

Save. Every new chat in the project will now run with this preamble in addition to the agent's own instructions.

Step 4 — Start a chat and verify the context follows

Open the Threads tab and click New chat. Pick an agent — the default Assistant is fine for the first run — and ask a question one of the project's files answers (What does the contract say about the renewal clause?). The reply should cite the contract; the citation opens the file from the project's Files tab, not from the org-wide library.

If the agent answers without citing, the project's files were not retrieved — usually because the chosen agent has no retrieval tool enabled. Switch to an agent with RAG on, or enable it on the Assistant for project use.

Where this fits

A project with files, instructions, and threads is the smallest useful unit of shared context in Tale. The same shape scales — add members so a team works the project together, add a project-scoped agent so the voice is locked in, archive the project when the work ships.

For the deeper model of what a project is and when to reach for one, see Project concepts. For project-scoped agents, see Project agents.