Home: what needs you

Home answers one question: what needs my attention? It is one page per organization, above any single team. It looks across every team you belong to in that organization and shows work that needs you now and notifications about things that happened.

What’s on the page

Home is laid out like a familiar AI chat page, with your work one click away:

• Ask fills the main part of the page. Before you ask anything, it greets you with “Ask about your work”, the question box, and four starting questions as cards beneath it. Once you ask, the conversation fills the page and the question box stays at the bottom. Ask works in one team at a time, the one you choose; the rest of Home spans all your teams. See Ask.
• Back, at the top left of the page, appears once there is somewhere to go back to: it closes the inbox or the conversation history, or takes you from a conversation back to the starting questions. It never leaves Home. See Conversation history.
• At the top right of the conversation are three icon buttons, in this order. Each shows its name when you point at it or move to it with the keyboard, and screen readers announce the name.
  • Inbox (a bell), with your unread count. It opens your notifications in the sidebar described below. The Inbox view has its own address, so you can link to it. See Notifications.
  • Conversation history (a clock icon) shows your conversations in the sidebar. See Conversation history.
  • Your work shows your work at a glance in the sidebar. Its icon is the same panel icon the app’s own sidebar uses to open and close, turned to the right.
• All three open the same sidebar on the right: a full-height panel of its own beside the page, with the same rounded corners and border as the page. Opening it makes the page narrower; it never covers the conversation. It slides open and closed the way the app’s left sidebar does (instantly if your device asks for reduced motion), and its header names what it shows. Pressing a button opens the sidebar on that view; pressing another button switches the view; pressing the active button again, pressing Escape, or using the sidebar’s close button closes it, and the keyboard focus goes back to the button. The sidebar is closed until you open it, so the conversation has the whole page. Home remembers which view you left open, or that you closed it, in this browser only.
• When Your work is shown, the sidebar has:
  • Needs you: the first five items, with Show all for the rest, and Waiting on others. See Needs you.
  • Recent activity: your latest few notifications, with Open inbox for the rest.
  • At the bottom, What Home can’t show yet. See What Home can’t show yet.

On a narrow screen, such as a phone, Home is one column with Ask first and there is no room for a sidebar. Back sits at the top left and the same three icon buttons sit at the top right, in the same order: Inbox, Conversation history and Needs you (the phone form of Your work, with its count). Each opens a panel over the page. The question box sits at the bottom of the screen. What Home can’t show yet is at the bottom of the Needs you panel.

Needs you

Needs you lists open issues that are assigned to you, plus open issues whose latest Intent draft you wrote, that have at least one of these reasons:

Reason	What it means
Blocks other work	Your issue blocks at least one open issue. Home lists the issues waiting on it.
Due	The due date has passed or is a few days away, shown in calendar days, for example “Overdue by 3 days” or “Due tomorrow”.
Intent draft not approved	The issue’s latest Intent is a draft nobody has approved yet. Home says who drafted it. Any team member can approve; a draft with no goal written does not count.
Intent change proposed	A newer draft sits on top of an approved Intent, so the agreement may be about to change.
Urgent	The issue’s priority is Urgent.

Every item shows all of its reasons in words, its team and, where Orneos knows it, how long it has been waiting. Items are ordered by their most important reason in the order of this table, then by how long they have been waiting (longest first), then by due date. There is no hidden score.

Waiting on others is a separate, collapsed list: your open issues that are blocked by another open issue. Being blocked alone does not put an item in Needs you, because the next step belongs to someone else. It is shown so the work is not forgotten.

Home lists at most 50 items and tells you how many more qualify. An open issue with none of these reasons is not listed; My Issues remains the full list of your work.

Each item shows its reference and title, its team, and its reasons as short labels. Next to it, Ask about this starts a question about that item in Ask, and Explain opens a short account of it (see Explain).

An item leaves Home when its state changes: it is completed, reassigned, unblocked, its Intent is approved or its due date moves. There is no “done” button on Home, so nothing on Home can mark work complete by accident.

Notifications

A notification records something that happened. A Needs you item describes current state. They are kept separate on purpose.

You receive an in-app notification when someone else:

• assigns an issue to you, either when creating it or by reassigning it;
• comments on your issue, meaning an issue assigned to you, or one you created if it has no assignee;
• approves the Intent of your issue, with “your issue” meaning the same as for comments;
• finishes an issue that was blocking one of your open issues. Other blockers may still remain; the issue’s relations show what is left.

You are never notified about your own actions. Each event produces one notification; a retried or replayed change does not create a duplicate.

Notifications are in the Inbox, opened from the Inbox button (or Open inbox under Recent activity); the button shows how many are unread. The inbox opens in the sidebar beside the conversation (on a phone, as a panel over the page); press Escape, the close button or the Inbox button again to close it. Unread notifications come first, then newest first. Each notification shows the issue’s title and key first, with a small icon for what happened; underneath, in smaller text, who did what (such as “Ana assigned you”), the team, a note if the issue has since closed or is no longer yours, and how long ago it happened. Unread notifications have a dot and bolder text. The inbox loads your newest 30; Show more loads older ones, 30 at a time, back to the oldest notification still kept. If older notifications cannot be loaded or refreshed, the inbox says so and offers Retry; until then the older ones already shown stay as they were. Opening a notification marks it read and takes you to the issue in its own team. Mark all read (the double-check button in the inbox header) marks every notification up to the newest one you have loaded; anything that arrives afterwards stays unread.

Read is not resolved. Reading a notification does not change the issue, and finishing the issue does not mark the notification read. A notification says when it no longer concerns you, for example “Closed” or “No longer yours” (it was reassigned, or is no longer one of yours).

Notification text is taken from the issue as it is now, not from a stored copy. If you lose access to a team, its notifications disappear from your list. Notifications are kept for 90 days, up to your most recent 500.

While you are connected, new notifications appear without a refresh, and the Home link in the sidebar shows your unread count. Home also checks again when you reconnect or return to the window.

Explain

Each item in Needs you and each notification in the inbox has an Explain button next to it. It opens, right under the item, a short account of that issue, built only from what Orneos has recorded. Opening it does not open the issue or mark a notification read.

• Why this needs you lists the same reasons as the item itself, with links to the issues behind them, such as the issues waiting on it or blocking it, and the Intent revision that is still a draft. If the issue does not need you now, it says why: “Not assigned to you”, “Closed”, “Waiting on others” or “No current reason”.
• What changed (last 14 days) is a short timeline of your notifications for the issue, Intent revisions drafted or approved, and who commented when. Comment text is not repeated here. Items since you last read the issue’s notifications are marked New.
• Related work lists open issues connected to this one: blocking and other relations, its parent and sub-issues, a few issues in the same project, and a few with similar titles. Each link opens the issue in its own team.

Explain shows only issues in teams you currently belong to. If you have lost access to the issue, it says the item isn’t available to you anymore.

Orneos does not record a history of field edits such as status, assignee or due date. Explain says so and shows when the issue was last edited instead.

Like the rest of Home, Explain needs a connection. It is not generated by AI. From an Explain panel in the inbox, Ask about this closes the inbox and starts a question about that issue (see Ask); items in Needs you have their own Ask button next to Explain.

Ask

Ask about your work is the main part of Home, laid out like a chat: your questions on the right, the results on the left, and the box for your next question at the bottom. Type a question or an issue reference and press Enter (Shift+Enter starts a new line). Home searches the issues of the team you are asking in (see One team at a time) and shows what it found as sources: each with its reference, title, team, status, why it matched and, when the issue needs you, the same reasons as in Needs you. Each result starts with a short count, such as “Found 3 matching issues”, then lists its sources as numbered rows; the first five show, with +N more for the rest. Each source opens the issue in its own team.

One team at a time

Ask answers about one team: the one you choose. The question box shows it as Asking in followed by the team’s name; it starts as the team you were last working in. Choose it to pick another of your teams in this organization. Your questions, the starting questions, the sources and any AI answer only use Orneos and that team’s work. Orneos enforces this itself: it never searches, cites or sends anything from another team in that conversation, even an issue you can open elsewhere.

• Changing the team starts a new conversation. The one you were in stays in your conversation history (see Conversation history), and Home tells you it switched.
• Each conversation remembers its team: the history list shows it, and bringing a conversation back brings back its team.
• Ask about this on an issue from another team starts a new conversation in that issue’s team, and Home says so.
• Needs you, Recent activity and the inbox still show all your teams. Only Ask is limited to the team you choose.
• If you lose access to a team, Ask refuses to answer in it; choose another team.

Starting questions

Before you ask anything, Ask offers four starting questions. They answer from the team you are asking in, without searching and without AI:

Starting question	What it shows
What needs my attention?	Your items in that team that need you, with their reasons, as in Needs you.
What’s blocking my work?	Your items in that team that block other open issues in it, and your items waiting on another issue in it.
What changed recently?	Your most recent notifications from that team, newest first. Opening one works as it does in the inbox.
Find related work…	Puts the cursor in the question box with a hint, so you can describe the work in your own words.

When Home has loaded and a starting question would have nothing to show in that team, its card is unavailable and says why instead, naming the team: for example “Nothing needs you in Platform right now.”, “Nothing is blocking you in Platform.” or “No recent notifications in Platform.”. While Home is still loading, or if it couldn’t load or refresh that information, the card stays available, and asking shows the loading state or the problem with Retry; Home never tells you there is nothing when it doesn’t know. Find related work… is always available.

Each answer shows at most 10 items and names its team, such as “2 items need you in Platform.”. What needs my attention? and What’s blocking my work? say how many more they found; What changed recently? points you to the inbox for older notifications. An answer reflects Home at the moment you asked; Needs you and the inbox keep updating beside it. Because a starting question looks only at one team, an issue blocked only by work in another team is not counted as blocked there; Needs you still shows it.

Follow-ups and ranking

• A follow-up question builds on the sources of your previous question, so you can narrow down (“which of those are blocked?”). Orneos checks your access to each of them again; an issue you can no longer see, or one outside the team you are asking in, simply drops out.
• Ask about this on a Needs you item, or in an Explain panel, scopes your next question to that issue and shows its explanation alongside the sources (from that issue’s team only). A follow-up after a starting question builds on the items it showed.
• At most 10 sources are shown per question, best matches first: the issue you asked about (when the question is scoped to one), then an exact issue reference, then sources from your previous question that still match it (all of them, if the follow-up matches nothing new), then title matches, then summary matches. Within each of these, issues matching more of your words come first, then the most recently updated. Each source says why it matched; nothing is hidden behind a score.
• Clear empties the conversation on screen and brings back the starting questions. Where history is saved, questions already saved stay in your history; where it is not, Clear discards the conversation, unlike Back (see below).

Every result is labelled “Sources — not generated by AI”, and the question box says it is in search mode: answers come from your teams’ work, not AI, and AI answers aren’t on yet. Ask works fully without AI, and neither the search nor the starting questions ever send your work to an AI provider.

Conversation history

Back takes you from a conversation to the starting questions and keeps the conversation. The Conversation history button at the top right lists your conversations, with New conversation (which stays in the current team). What the list holds depends on whether saved history is enabled for your workspace.

Saved history (where it is enabled)

Where saved history is enabled, every question you ask in Home is saved to your account, so you can come back to a conversation after a reload, after signing out, or on another device. The history panel says so: “Saved to your account. Only you can see them. Deleted after 90 days without activity; you can delete them anytime.”

• What is saved: your question as you typed it (up to 500 characters), the team you asked in, the issue a question was about if you scoped it, which starting question you chose, the identifiers of the issues shown as sources, and when each question was asked. Orneos itself works out which sources to save, from the answer it gave you. The title starts as your first question (cut at 80 characters), or the starting question’s name.
• What is not saved: no issue titles, statuses, summaries or explanations (they are read fresh when you reopen a conversation), and no AI answers. An AI answer’s receipt of what was sent and what it cost is kept, as it is for every AI request.
• Who can see it: only you. Your teammates and company administrators cannot see it, and there is no screen or report of it for anyone else. Like all workspace data, it is stored in the Orneos database; see Privacy and your data for who can access that.
• Each conversation belongs to one team. It appears in your list only while you are a member of that team. If you are removed from the team, or from the company, your conversations in it are deleted at the same moment.
• The list shows each conversation’s title, its team and when you last used it, newest first, with Show older conversations after the first 20. You can rename a conversation (up to 80 characters), delete one, or Delete all your conversations in the organization; deleting asks you to confirm and cannot be undone.
• Reopening a conversation brings back its questions and, for each, the sources as they are now, labelled Checked now. A source you can no longer see is not named: the question says, for example, “2 of 5 sources no longer available”. A starting question shows the items Home found for it, checked now in the same way; it is not answered again. Where an AI answer was given, the question says “AI answer not saved — receipt kept”, and you can ask for one again.
• Saving shows on each question. The result appears at once; under it, “Saving…” turns into a small “Saved”. If saving fails, the question says “Not saved” with Retry, which saves that same question once, never twice. You can keep working either way.
• Limits: up to 50 questions per conversation. The 51st is not saved: the question says the conversation is full and offers New conversation. Orneos keeps your 100 most recent conversations per organization; older ones are deleted.
• Retention: a conversation becomes eligible for deletion 90 days after its last question and is deleted within about a day after that. You can delete it yourself at any time. Deletion is immediate in Orneos but does not reach backups; see Privacy and your data.

Where saved history is not enabled: this tab only

Saved history is turned on workspace by workspace, separately from Home itself. Where it is not enabled, nothing about your conversations is saved anywhere, and the history panel says so: “This tab only — conversations aren’t saved.” Back keeps a conversation in this tab’s history, and Home says it was saved to this session’s history. The list shows each earlier conversation’s first question, its team, how many questions it has and when it started. Choosing one brings back its questions, its team and its answers, including any AI answer it showed (an answer is not asked again), and puts your current conversation into the list. Home keeps up to 10 earlier conversations; the oldest drops off after that.

This history lives only in the open browser tab. It is not shared with other tabs or devices. It stays while you move around the app, so you can open an issue from an answer and come back (with the browser’s Back button or the Home link) to the same conversation. It is gone when you reload the page, sign out or switch organization.

While an AI answer is on its way

While an AI answer is being prepared, opening another conversation, switching teams, Back from a conversation, Clear, deleting the open conversation and Delete all wait until it arrives, so an answer you may be charged for is never thrown away. If you leave Home before it arrives, the request is stopped and the question says so when you come back: “AI answer interrupted when you left Home”. Its receipt, with what was sent and any charge, is kept on the server, and you can ask for an AI answer again.

AI answers: built, not available

Orneos also has an optional Answer with AI step for a question. It would send that question and exactly its listed sources — all from the team you are asking in — to an AI provider, after showing you what will be sent, where it goes, the provider’s data terms and the amount reserved, and only once you confirm. The answer would be labelled as AI interpretation, with each sentence linked to the sources it cites, and every request would come with a receipt of what was sent and what it cost.

AI answers are not available in any workspace today. They are enabled separately from Home, and only in a workspace where Home itself is enabled. Even there, they stay off until all of these are in place:

• the AI provider’s data terms (retention, training use, region and account) are verified;
• a company administrator allows sending work to that provider, choosing which kinds of information may be sent;
• the company has an AI budget.

Until then, Home does not show Answer with AI at all, and Settings → Company has no AI section. If Orneos enables the step for a workspace before everything above is in place, the button stays disabled and Home says which of these is missing. Company administrators can then review the provider’s processing terms under Settings → Company; allowing export there stays disabled until the terms are verified, and an existing permission can always be withdrawn.

Online only, and never changes your work

Home reads from the server, so it needs a connection. Offline, it says so and links back to your team’s board; your teams keep working offline as usual. A local, offline-capable Home is a later step. Saved conversation history is online only too: it is never stored in your browser.

Home does not change any issue; the only things it saves are your read notifications and, where enabled, your conversation history. Opening an item takes you to that issue in its own team; other browser tabs keep the team they show.

How you reach it

Where Home is enabled for your workspace, opening your organization’s address without a page (for example from an invitation, or /o/your-company/) opens Home, and every team shows a Home link in the sidebar. Where it is not enabled, the same address opens your team’s board, there is no Home link, and a Home address shows “Not available in your workspace”. Links to a specific team page open that page in its team either way.

Notifications are recorded even where Home is not enabled yet, under the same rules and retention as above, so Home shows your recent notifications when it is turned on.

What Home can’t show yet

These would belong on Home, but the information they need does not exist in Orneos yet. Home does not guess at them. On Home, What Home can’t show yet at the bottom of the Your work column (on a phone, of the Needs you panel) lists them:

• Review requests. There is no way yet to ask a specific person to review a change.
• Approval requests. Intent has no requested approver; any team member can approve.
• Mentions. There is no @mention feature; see Comments.
• Agent work waiting on a person. Captured runs do not yet record that they are waiting for input.

There is also no email, push notification, digest or per-kind notification setting. Email notifications are planned; see Product status.

Related

• Control room — the planned shared attention queue for agent work, review and escalation. Home is a personal list built from existing issue state; it is not that queue.
• Sub-issues and relations — where blocking relationships come from.
• Intent — drafts, approval and revisions.
• Companies and teams — which teams you can see.