Projects Overview

A project in Obvious is a container for a piece of work — like a folder for a specific initiative. Everything you create, every conversation you have with the agent, every automated workflow you set up lives inside one.

If you understand projects, you understand how Obvious stays organized. This article covers what goes into a project, how to think about when to create new ones, and how to keep things from turning into a junk drawer.

What's inside a project

A project holds artifacts, threads, tasks, and files.

Artifacts

These are the things you build — workbooks, documents, views, folios, images. A project might contain a single document or dozens of interconnected artifacts. As your project grows, you can organize artifacts into folders to keep related items together.

Threads

Threads are conversations with the agent. Every project starts with a main thread — your primary workspace for talking to the agent and getting things done. The agent creates artifacts directly from these conversations, so your thread history is also the story of how your work came together.

Tasks

Tasks are saved workflows that run on a schedule or in response to an event. Build a process once in a thread, save it as a task, and it runs automatically going forward. Tasks live in the project they were created in.

How to create a project

You can create a new project by asking the agent (e.g., Create a new project called "Q2 Customer Analysis") or by clicking + New Project in the left sidebar. Both methods will land you in a fresh project with an empty main thread, ready to work.

When to create a new project

The right answer depends on how you work, but here's a useful rule of thumb: if the work has a different audience, a different goal, or a different timeline, it probably deserves its own project.

Signs you need a new project

You're about to share this work with a different group of people than the rest of the project.
The thread conversations have drifted to a completely different topic.
You're creating folders inside a project just to keep two unrelated workstreams from colliding.

Signs you should keep everything in one project

The artifacts reference each other. A view built from a workbook, a document summarizing that workbook's data, a task that refreshes it weekly — these belong together.
The same people need access to everything.
It's all one initiative, even if it has multiple phases.

Projects are private by default — only you can see them. To collaborate, share a project with specific people and choose their permission level:

View — They can see everything but can't edit.
Edit — They can modify artifacts, chat in threads, and run tasks.

You can also share a project with an entire team or generate a link for broader access. Sharing happens at the project level, which is why keeping unrelated work in separate projects matters — you control who sees what by choosing which projects to share.

Organizing projects

As your project list grows, features like project folders, search (Cmd/Ctrl + K), and favorites help keep things manageable. Group related projects into folders, quickly find any project by name, or pin frequently used projects to the top of your sidebar for quick access.

Key Concepts — The full mental model: how projects, artifacts, threads, and tasks fit together.
Quickstart — Create your first project and workbook in five minutes.
Sharing & Permissions — A deeper look at who can access what.