Talk to your companion
The companion is the place to start. Instead of opening the right page first, you ask her — in writing or aloud — and she finds the answer: what is due today, how much time you logged this week, how a project is going. When you tell her something, she works out whether it belongs to a task, a project, a goal or today's plan, and proposes filing it there. Nothing is written until you tap.
The detail pages stay where they are. The chat is where things start; tasks, projects, goals and the Daily OS are where you refine what was started — estimates, checklists, priorities, blocks on the timeline.
The companion chat is new and still growing. It ships switched off, and what she can do changes from release to release. This page describes what works today; What is coming lists what is planned.
Turn her on
Open Settings → Advanced Settings → Config Flags. In the Advanced & experimental group, turn on:
| Switch | What it does |
|---|---|
| Companion chat | The chat itself. Required. |
| Companion | Her animated figure in the chat, beside AI summaries and in the Day header, plus Settings → Preferences → Companion to dress her. Optional. |
| AI summary playback (in the Preferences group) | Her voice. Needed, together with Companion, for her to answer aloud. |
The chat needs a working AI provider. She uses the Settings default AI profile unless you pick another one for her, and falls back to a small hosted model from Melious or Mistral when you have set up one of those providers. See Connect an AI provider.
Open the chat
- Desktop: select Ask the companion in the sidebar, or press Cmd+L (macOS) / Ctrl+L (Linux and Windows) from anywhere.
- Phone: tap Ask the companion beside the menu button in the navigation bar.
While the app is locked to a single category, she is hidden, because her conversations span every category.
Ask her
Type in Ask anything… and send. Questions she answers today:
- What is due. "What's due today?", "What's overdue?", "What's due this week?" She keeps today and overdue apart unless you ask for both.
- Where your time went. "How much time did I log this week?" works for today, yesterday, this week, the past 7 or 30 days, this month and last month. She sums time per category with the same numbers as Time analysis, shows a chart, and names the tasks the time went to when you ask what you worked on.
- What you finished. "What did I complete this week?" counts each task on the day it was completed or rejected, not the day it was created.
- A specific task or project. "Where does the habitat redesign stand?" She hands the question to that task's or project's agent and shows its answer under its name — From … — without rewording it.
- A goal. A question or update about one of your goals becomes a turn in that goal agent's own chat, and its reply appears in yours. Goals are an optional section: turn on Goals under Settings → Sections.
- Your journal. "What did we decide about the sardine supplier?" When no single task or project holds the answer, she searches your journal and answers From your journal, listing the entries she relied on. Each one opens its source.
- Your pull requests. "How many pull requests did I merge this week?" works when GitHub is connected under Settings → Advanced Settings → GitHub. She counts only the pull requests already stored on this device.
Two or more tasks come back as a card of rows — status, the agent's one-line summary, category, priority and due date. Tap a task to open it on top of the chat; going back returns you to the conversation.
Type @ to name a category and narrow the answer to it. She only ever sees the categories she is allowed to see.
If she is not sure what you meant, she asks one short question with up to three choices.
Tell her what happened
When you tell her something instead of asking, she proposes where it goes. A proposal is a card with buttons; nothing is filed until you tap.
| You say | She proposes |
|---|---|
| An update about a task or project | File it — your exact words become an entry under it. |
| "Make a task to fix the gate, high priority" | Make it a task — she fills in the title, category, priority, due day, estimate and start time from what you said and tells you what she read. The task's category agent is assigned. |
| "A follow-up to that one" | Make it a task, linked as a follow-up to the task named earlier in the conversation. |
| "Move the count to the afternoon" | Change today — opens Daily OS planning with your words. |
| Something new and bigger | New project… or Start a goal…, opening the form with your words in it. |
| Anything else | Save as a note, or Leave it. |
If she guessed the wrong place, choose Somewhere else. Anything nothing owns waits in the Inbox, opened from its chip in the chat header or the list of conversations. Everything a tap wrote can be opened or undone.
Keep several conversations
Like a ChatGPT or Claude window, each subject can have its own conversation — start one with New chat. Conversations are titled by their first question and listed newest first behind the Chats button in the header (beside the conversation on a wide desktop window). Use Search chats to find one, and each row's menu to rename, archive or delete it. Deleting hides a conversation on every device; anything you filed from it stays where it is.
Talk to her
Ask a question aloud and she answers aloud, with her lips moving to her voice. A typed question always gets a written answer. Tap to talk and tap again to send, or hold to talk and let go to send.
Speaking needs Companion and AI summary playback on, and a voice: either the read-aloud model of her AI profile, or the on-device voice where your platform supports it. In the header you can mute her, have her Say it again, or choose View companion full screen to see her full size. On a wide desktop window the conversation sits beside her there, and she points at each task she lists as she says it.
To pick the AI profile she thinks with, open AI profile in the header menu. Settings default makes her follow your default again.
Make her yours
With Companion on, open Settings → Preferences → Companion:
- Character: Lotti (a grandmother), Grandpa, Aunt or Uncle.
- Skin tone, Hair color, Hairstyle, Eye color and Outfit — or a fresh outfit each time you open the app.
- Sass: Warm, Cheeky or Sassy — how she reacts to what she reads aloud.
- Voice: Answer spoken questions aloud turns her spoken replies on or off.
Besides the chat, she stands beside a task's AI summary and reads it when you press its read-aloud control, sits in the Day page header and briefs you on the day when tapped, and greets you during onboarding.
Chat first, detail pages for the details
| Start in the chat | Refine on the page |
|---|---|
| "What's due today?" | Tasks — status, priority, due date, checklists |
| "Make a task to…" | The new task — estimate, labels, checklist, linked entries |
| "How much time this week?" | Time analysis — any range, any category |
| "Move X to the afternoon" | Daily OS — blocks on the timeline |
| An update on a project | Projects — the project's report and tasks |
What is coming
Everything below is direction, not a shipped feature; scope and order can change.
- People. Asking about and telling her about the people in your life, handed to each person's agent the way goals already are.
- Events. Asking about an event and filing photos and notes to it from the chat.
- Settings and customization by asking. Changing how Lotti behaves — or how she looks — by saying so, instead of finding the right settings page.
- Filing without the tap, as an opt-in, for the kinds of updates you always confirm.
- More of her. Moods that reflect your record, gentle nudges, and a face for each agent.
Privacy
She reads only what is already on your device, within the categories she may see. One question can use more than one AI profile: her own profile decides where the question goes, a question about a task, project or goal is answered with that agent's profile, and an answer from your journal uses the Settings default profile. Your question and the parts of your record each answer needs go to the provider of the profile used. To keep everything on your device, give all of them a local model. She never changes your record on her own: every write is a tap.