Tutorials
Setting up a project
Keep each case, client, or job in one clear place.
A chat is a conversation. A project is a container for real work: the files, the notes, the standing instructions, the chats, and the documents OOMU produced: plus one decision about whether any of it may leave your Mac.
If you only ever use chat, OOMU works fine. But the moment a piece of work has more than one conversation attached to it, a project is the difference between context you keep re-explaining and context OOMU already has.
Step 1: Create it
Go to Projects and choose New project. You need a name; everything else can wait.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | Required. Up to 120 characters. |
| Description | Optional summary, for your benefit. |
| Cloud access | The one decision that matters. See below. |
| Instructions | Standing context applied to every chat in this project. |
The cloud access decision
Every project carries exactly one of two policies:
| Policy | What it means |
|---|---|
| Only this Mac | "Nothing in this project ever leaves your Mac." |
| This Mac and the cloud | "OOMU may use your cloud model when it's a better fit." |
New projects default to Only this Mac. This is not a preference the model is asked to respect. It is evaluated natively before a route is chosen: in a local-only project the router is told cloud is unavailable, and chats there show the reminder "This project keeps every chat on this Mac."
Choose Only this Mac for anything privileged, personal, or under a client confidentiality obligation. You can change the policy later, and changing it does not retroactively unsend anything: because nothing was sent.
Step 2: Add the files
Open the project and go to the Files tab. Choose Add files, or drag them onto the panel.
| Accepted | Limits |
|---|---|
PDF, Word (.docx), Excel (.xlsx / .xls), CSV | 8 MB per file, 12 files per import |
OOMU extracts each file's text locally (the panel says "Reading document locally…") keeps a private copy, records a SHA-256, and splits the text into passages tagged with page number and heading. A file shows as Extracted or Indexed when it is ready, with its page, sheet, or row counts alongside.
Nothing in this step touches the network, including in a project that permits the cloud.
Step 3: Ask questions across all of them
The Ask Documents tab is the payoff. Type a question ("Compare rates, payment terms, and key differences") and OOMU searches every passage in the project, answers from what it found, and cites the exact source passages. Each citation opens the passage it came from, with its page number.
The header confirms where the work happened: "Answered on this Mac in {seconds}s." You can export the answer and its citations as a Word file.
The Comparison tab is the companion: pick two to five documents and OOMU aligns them clause by clause and produces a redline. Both are covered in depth in Analyzing documents.
Step 4: Write standing instructions
Edit project → Instructions is where you tell OOMU what to remember whenever it works here. Up to 32,000 characters, applied to every chat in the project.
Good instructions are specific and durable:
This is a municipal contract review for the City of Ashford. Cite the exact clause number for every legal claim. Flag anything that shifts liability to the city. Never draft outbound correspondence without asking me first.
Bad instructions restate your profile, which OOMU already has, or describe a single task, which belongs in the chat.
Step 5: Keep notes
The Notes tab is a shared scratchpad: a living markdown note for findings, calculations, and milestones. It is versioned, so each save increments a revision number. Unlike everything else here, OOMU can read and add to it: two native capabilities exist for exactly that, project.scratchpad.read and project.scratchpad.append.
That makes Notes the natural place to accumulate results across a long piece of work. Ask OOMU to record what it found, and the finding is still there next week, in a note you can also edit yourself.
Working inside the project
- Chats in the project appear in the project's own list and in the main Chat destination. A chat's settings panel moves it into or out of a project.
- Created Files collects the Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and PDF files OOMU produced while working here. The Documents tab at the top of the workspace shows the same set.
- The header summarizes the container: "{chats} chats · {workflows} workflows · {files} files."
- Workflows can be scoped to a project, so a saved sequence runs in the right context.
Archiving and deleting
Archive hides a project without deleting its work: "Hides this project without deleting its work." Everything stays; it just leaves your active list. Restore brings it back.
Delete is different, and deliberately reversible for a while. Deleting stages the removal and shows an Undo toast with a ten-second countdown. If you do nothing, the removal commits permanently once that window ends. Settings → Storage & Privacy states the same rule: "Deleted chats, projects, and workflows are removed permanently after the Undo period ends."
Deleting a project removes the project, not automatically everything it touched. It removes the project and its grouping. Work that lives in its own right, such as a document already saved or a memory OOMU formed, is deleted through its own control. If your intent is erasure rather than tidying, the privacy and security page sets out exactly what each delete removes.
Related
- Analyzing documents: Ask Documents and document comparison in full.
- Generating documents: producing the files that land in Created Files.
- Privacy & security: how the cloud access policy is actually enforced.