Creating a Folio

This guide walks you through creating a folio — a single-page web presentation you can design, customize, and share with a link. Think of it like a single-page website built from your project data.

What's a folio?

A folio turns your documents, sheets, and data into a polished, shareable web page. Use one for a quarterly report, a project summary, a landing page, or a memo that needs to look good outside of Obvious.

Folios live in your project alongside your other content. Once published, anyone with the link can view the page — no Obvious account required.

Create a folio

The quickest way: ask the agent.

Create a folio with a summary of our Q4 results

The agent picks a layout, pulls in your project data, and generates the page. You can review it, request changes, and publish when it's ready.

To be more specific, tell the agent what type and style you want:

Create an article-style folio using the Q4 Revenue sheet, with charts, in an editorial design style

The agent handles the rest.

Create one manually

1. Click + New in the toolbar, then select Folio.

2. Type & Name — Enter a title and choose a folio type (more on these below). Click Next.

3. Style & Visuals — Pick a design style: Swiss/International Typographic (precise, grid-based), Editorial/Magazine (elegant, serif-heavy), or Modern/Digital (contemporary, cards and gradients). Toggle whether to include charts and AI-generated images. Click Next.

4. Data Sources — Select which sheets and documents from your project the folio should draw from. This step is optional — you can create a folio without source data. Click Next.

5. Guidance — Add any specific instructions: focus areas, sections to include, tone, or content the folio should feature. Click Create Folio.

Obvious generates the folio. This takes a moment — the page appears in your project when it's ready.

The three folio types

Each type is designed for a different kind of content.

Article

A long-form, single-column layout built for narrative writing. Text-driven with clean typography and a focused reading experience. Use it for memos, blog posts, thought pieces, or any content where the words do the heavy lifting.

Presentation

A full-width layout with a hero section, metric cards, and visual sections. Use it for landing pages, project overviews, or anything that needs to communicate key numbers alongside narrative context.

Report

A document-style layout with KPI cards, analysis sections, and embedded charts. Use it for quarterly reports, performance summaries, or data-driven narratives where metrics and visuals need to sit alongside the story.

Customize your folio

After creation, ask the agent to make changes:

Make the hero section more prominent and add a chart showing revenue by region

Change the design style to editorial and shorten the executive summary

The agent regenerates the folio with your updates. Each version is a fresh build — you're not editing HTML, you're directing the output.

Publish and share

Folios stay private until you publish them.

1. Click Publish in the toolbar.

2. Choose an access mode — Public (anyone with the link) or PIN-protected (requires a 4-character code).

3. Optionally set a custom slug for a cleaner URL. If your workspace has an org slug configured, the URL follows the pattern folio.obvious.ai/your-org/your-slug.

4. Click Publish.

The published URL appears in the toolbar. Share it directly — recipients see the folio as a standalone web page.

Tip: After updating a folio's content, click Publish again to push the latest version live. The URL stays the same.

Next steps

• Embed External Content — Bring outside webpages into your project.
• Documents Overview — Work with markdown documents in Obvious.
• Workbooks & Sheets Overview — The data that powers your folios.