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Key Concepts

Published February 27, 2026 · Last updated March 5, 2026 · 5 min read

Obvious has a small number of core concepts. Once you understand how they relate to each other, everything else clicks into place. This article is the map.

The mental model

Think of Obvious as a workspace organized around projects. Each project contains the things you create (artifacts), the conversations where you work with an AI agent (threads), and saved workflows that can run automatically (tasks). That's the whole structure. Projects hold everything. Threads produce artifacts. Tasks automate the work.

The rest of this article walks through each concept and — more importantly — how they connect.

Projects

A project is the container for a piece of work. It holds your artifacts, files, threads, and tasks — everything related to a specific initiative, analysis, or ongoing workflow.

Projects can be short-lived or run for months. They're also how you manage access — share a project with specific people, set permissions, and collaborate in the same workspace.

Artifacts

Artifacts are the things you create inside a project — the work product that comes from your conversations, your imports, and your ideas.

Here's what you can build:

  • Workbooks & Sheets — Structured data in sheets with typed fields. Import, enter manually, or generate with the agent.
  • Documents — Rich-formatted long-form writing with embedded charts. Reports, notes, briefs, plans.
  • Views — Different ways to visualize sheet data: Board (Kanban), Calendar, Timeline. Same data, different lens.
  • Folios — Interactive, publishable web pages. Landing pages, visual reports, dashboards.
  • Images — Generated or uploaded visuals.

There are a few others (slides, galleries, iframes), but these are the ones you'll use most. Every artifact lives inside a project, and you can organize them into folders as things grow.

Threads

Threads are conversations with the Obvious agent. They're where you describe what you need, ask questions, give feedback, and steer the work.

When you open a project, you land in the main thread — your primary conversation. This is where most work happens, creating artifacts that appear on the right side of your workspace.

For complex work, the agent can spin up sub-threads to handle parallel tasks with focused context, then bring results back to the main thread. Think of it like a project lead delegating to specialists — you see the full picture, the agent handles the coordination.

Every thread maintains its own context, remembering what you've discussed, decided, and built within it.

The agent

The agent is the AI that works alongside you in every thread. It sees your project — your artifacts, your files, your data — and acts on them directly.

What the agent can do:

  • Create and edit artifacts — Workbooks, documents, views, folios.
  • Analyze data — Run SQL queries, spot patterns, generate summaries, create charts.
  • Research — Search the web, synthesize findings.
  • Connect to tools — Slack, email, calendars, CRMs, APIs.
  • Write code — Data transformations, scripts, hosted apps.

The agent has different modes that change how it works:

  • Auto — Balanced speed and reasoning. Good for most work.
  • Fast — Quicker responses for lighter tasks.
  • Deep Work — Thorough analysis for complex problems.

Switch modes anytime using the mode selector in the chat panel. Additional specialized modes are available too — you'll discover them as your work demands it.

Tasks

Tasks are saved workflows that Obvious can run on demand or on a schedule. If the agent helps you do something once, a task makes it repeatable.

A task captures a series of steps — data checks, report generation, API calls, notifications — and runs them automatically. Set a daily schedule or configure a webhook trigger. You define the workflow interactively in a thread, then save it as a task so it runs on its own going forward.

How everything connects

Projects are the outermost container. Everything — artifacts, threads, tasks, files — lives inside one.

Threads are where work happens. You talk to the agent, and the agent creates artifacts. A single thread might produce a workbook, two documents, and a board over the course of a conversation.

Artifacts connect to each other. A view (Board, Calendar, Timeline) links to a specific sheet — change the data, and the view updates automatically. Documents can embed charts from sheet data. Folios can pull from documents and sheets to create a shareable page.

Tasks automate what threads do manually. Build a workflow interactively, then save it as a task that runs on a schedule or in response to an event.

Sub-threads let the agent break complex work into parallel tracks. Each sub-thread produces its own artifacts, and the main thread synthesizes the results.

The pattern: projects organize, threads drive, artifacts capture, tasks repeat.

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