Quickstart: Your First 5 Minutes

In the next five minutes, you'll create a project, build a workbook, and ask the Obvious agent to fill it with data. By the end, you'll have a working artifact you can edit, share, and build on.

Step 1: Start a new project

After you sign in, you'll land on the home screen. A heading asks, "What do you want to achieve?" and below it, a text input is waiting for you.

Type a sentence describing what you want to work on. Something simple works:

Track my team's open tasks

Press Enter. Obvious creates a new project and drops you into it. You'll see a split view: a chat panel on the left and your artifacts on the right.

That's your workspace. Everything you build lives here.

Step 2: Create your first workbook

You have two ways to create a workbook:

Option A: Ask the agent. In the chat panel, type something like:

Create a task tracker with columns for task name, owner, status, and due date

The agent builds the workbook for you with columns configured, ready to go. It appears on the right side of your workspace.

Option B: Create one manually. Click the + button (labeled Create or upload artifacts), then select Sheet. An empty workbook opens with a blank sheet. Click the + button at the end of the column headers to add columns one at a time.

Either way, you now have a workbook and it took about ten seconds.

Step 3: Add some data

An empty workbook isn't very satisfying. Fix that.

In the chat panel, ask the agent:

Add 5 sample tasks with different statuses

The agent populates your workbook with realistic sample data. You'll see rows appear with names, owners, statuses, and dates all filled in.

You can also type directly into any cell to add or edit data yourself. Click a cell, type, press Tab to move to the next one.

Step 4: Ask the agent a question about your data

Here's where it gets interesting. The agent can see everything in your project. Try asking it something about the data you just created:

Which tasks are overdue?

Or:

Summarize the status of all tasks

The agent reads your workbook, analyzes it, and responds in the chat. No exporting, no formulas, no switching tools. Your data and your AI assistant live in the same place.

Step 5: Try one more thing

You've built a workbook and talked to the agent about it. Now try one of these to see what else is possible:

Type "Turn this into a board" and the agent creates a Kanban view of your tasks, grouped by status.

Type "Write a short summary document" and the agent drafts a document based on your data.

Drag a file (CSV, Excel, or PDF) into the chat. Obvious imports it and the agent can work with it immediately.

Each one takes seconds and produces something you can keep building on.

What you just built

You now have a project containing a structured workbook with data, and you've seen how the agent can create artifacts, populate data, and answer questions without leaving the workspace.

That's the core loop: describe what you need, let the agent build it, refine it together.

Next steps

• Key Concepts — Understand how workbooks, documents, agents, and views fit together.

• Your First Workbook — A deeper guide to configuring fields, importing data, and structuring sheets.

• Working with the Agent — Get more out of the AI agent with better prompts and advanced workflows.