Projects, folders and documents

The file browser is the first thing you see, and it behaves like the file managers you already know. Click a folder to open it, click a document to read it, and use the breadcrumb or Back to go up.

Projects

A project is the top level of your workspace: one client, product, or body of work. Create one with New project. Projects appear in the sidebar, and the home screen shows them next to your recent documents.

Folders

Use New folder inside a project or another folder, and nest as deep as the work needs. Two folders side by side can't share a name.

A folder can carry a note that applies to everything inside it, and you can restrict it to specific people.

The sidebar

The button at the top of the sidebar, beside the Filement name, hides the sidebar and gives the page the whole window. The button then moves to the left of the top bar, where it shows the sidebar again. <kbd>⌘</kbd>+<kbd>\</kbd> does the same. Filement remembers the choice in this browser. On a phone the same button opens the sidebar as a drawer.

Documents

There are two kinds:

• Markdown documents, made with New document or by uploading a .md or .txt file. They open in the editor.
• Uploaded files of any other type: PDFs, images, spreadsheets, anything. You can preview and download them, and Filement reads what is inside so search and the assistant can find them by their contents. See What gets read out of a file.

Arranging a folder

A folder, and a project's top level, is a board you arrange yourself, the way you arrange apps on a phone. Drag a card between two others and a slot opens for it; everything after it shifts along. Everyone in the workspace sees the same arrangement. There is no sort order to pick. Where you put something is the order, and it reads the same on a wide screen or a narrow one, because Filement stores the order and not a spot on a grid.

While you drag, the grid shows faintly underneath so you can see where the card will land.

On a touch screen, press and hold a card to pick it up, and tap it to open it. Press and hold only ever starts a drag. The card's … button is its menu. Tapping the empty space around the cards does nothing, so scrolling the board can't open something by accident. Press and hold that empty space for the New menu.

Drop a card on the middle of another one to combine them instead. Onto a folder moves it inside; onto a document connects the two. Once the card you hold is over the middle of another, it locks onto it: the target lights up and says what dropping there would do (Move into or Connect), and the rest of the board holds still until you move away, so your target can't shift under you.

Connected items sit together in one slot as a small fan of cards. Click it to see how they are connected and why. Right-click the fan, or use … at the top of an open one, for what you can do to all of its cards at once: re-check them with AI, move them, lock or unlock them, or move them to Trash. To connect to one particular card inside a fan, hold your card over the fan for a moment. It opens mid-drag and you can drop onto the one you mean.

Selecting several cards

With a mouse, drag across the empty space around the cards to draw a box: every card it touches is selected. Hold Shift, Cmd or Ctrl while dragging to add to what's already selected, or while clicking a card to add or remove just that one. A fan of cards is selected as a whole. Cmd+A (Ctrl+A) selects everything on the board, and Esc or a click on empty space lets go. A bar at the bottom says how many are selected and what you can do with them: download them as one zip, move them, re-check them with AI or move them to Trash (Cmd+Backspace or Delete does the same), with anything else under …. Right-click any selected card for the same actions. The menus only offer what works for every selected item: Lock or Unlock appears when they are all locked or all unlocked, and with exactly two selected you can connect them, or open two documents side by side. Right-clicking a card outside the selection lets go of it and opens that card's own menu. Selecting is for mouse and trackpad; on a touch screen, press and hold still picks a card up.

Uploading

Drag files into any folder, or use the upload button.

A panel opens as soon as you drop, grown out of the drop target, with one row per file and its progress. You can fold it down to a small pill and keep working. It follows you to other folders, and after a refresh or on another device it comes back folded until you've answered everything in it. The expand button, or a double-click on its title, grows it to the full height of the window.

• Exact duplicates never upload. If the same file already exists in the workspace, its row tells you where, and Filement doesn't store it twice.

• Same name, different content gets a question in the file's row:

  • A newer version of it keeps one document and adds a version you can roll back to.
  • A separate document keeps both and renames the new one, so nothing is overwritten.

• Your browser compresses photos and video before sending them. A camera photo carries megabytes of detail no screen will show, so the browser resizes it to 2048px on its long edge and saves it as WebP. Video becomes a 1280px MP4. This happens on your machine before anything uploads, so nothing is sent twice, and the location data cameras write into photos doesn't survive it.

  Two things follow. A compressed file is renamed to match what it now is, so photo.jpg is listed and downloaded as photo.webp, and the name always tells you what the file is. And anything that wouldn't gain is left exactly as it is: an image that is already small, an animated GIF, an SVG, a clip that comes out no smaller, or a file this browser can't read. PDFs, documents, spreadsheets, archives and everything else that isn't a photo or a video are stored byte for byte as uploaded.

Connections suggested as you upload

While the panel is open, Filement reads each file you upload against the rest of the workspace and suggests what it belongs with:

• Newer version of, Earlier version of, Copy of. The file is a revision of a document already here, the original of one, or the same document again (a re-export to PDF, say). Filement compares the text itself, the names (v2, final, dates) and the file's own modified date, so it still recognises an old original uploaded today as the older one.
• References, Responds to, and their reverse, Referenced by and Answered by. One document cites, answers or implements the other.
• Belongs in… The folder you dropped into has subfolders, and one of them is clearly a better home, judging by the folder's note, what is already in it and where the file's related documents live. Move there moves it; Keep here leaves it.

By default Filement files a new file for you when it's sure: it moves the file to where it belongs, and keeps a copy, version or reply connection as your own. Those rows say Automatic, and Undo on the row puts it back as a suggestion. What it isn't sure of, and every citation, waits for you. To confirm everything yourself instead, set Organizing new files to Ask me first in Settings → Preferences.

Every suggestion comes with a one-sentence reason. Keep makes it your own connection, Not related dismisses it for good, and Change keeps it as a different type or pointing the other way. You can undo any of it from the same row. Suggestions stay dashed until you keep them, the same way AI-suggested connections look everywhere else.

Filement doesn't link files from the same piece of work to each other one by one. Each file joins a thread instead, the whole piece of work in date order, and its row says which ("In thread Mobile launch"). Copies and older drafts join a family with one current version, and the board shows the family as one card ("3 versions"). The panel sums it up at the top ("11 files → joined Mobile launch · 2 families · 3 to confirm"), and Undo all takes back everything the review did.

You don't have to answer. Close the panel and unanswered suggestions stay in the document's Insights, like any other suggestion. Filement only ever suggests documents you can open and folders you can add to.

A review you haven't finished shows up on the Reviews page: one you closed the tab on mid-upload, or one for a file you saved from Zoho Cliq. The page appears in the sidebar only while something is waiting. Each entry says what is left (links to answer, files to place, files still being read). Open brings the review back in the panel, Accept all keeps every suggested connection and moves every file to where it belongs, and Done clears it from the list. Unanswered suggestions stay in each file's Insights.

Re-checking files already filed

Filement can read files it has already filed again: where each one belongs, and what it's a version, copy, reply or citation of. Use Re-check with AI on a file or folder's menu (a folder re-checks every file inside it), Re-check project with AI on a project's menu, the re-check button in a fan's header, or the bar at the bottom when several cards are selected. It doesn't re-read the file's text or rebuild its search index. It only asks the placement and connection questions again, and opens the answer in the same panel an upload uses. Up to 100 files are re-checked at once.

A re-check is a fresh look. It ignores what was decided before: a pair you marked Not related, or undid, is judged again on what the files say now, and so is anything you undid after it was filed automatically. Refuse it again and it stays refused for ordinary uploads.

A re-check can question connections you made yourself. If it reads two files differently (a newer version where you said one references the other), it asks Change it or Leave it; if it reads them as not connected at all, Remove it or Leave it. It never changes your own connections by itself, even with automatic filing on, and Undo puts yours back exactly as it was.

What gets read out of a file

Uploading does more than store bytes. Filement reads the text out of the file so you can search it and the assistant can quote it:

• PDFs, Word documents, spreadsheets and slide decks (.pdf, .docx, .xlsx, .pptx) have their text extracted. A spreadsheet is read sheet by sheet with each row on a line, and a deck slide by slide with its speaker notes.
• A Word document opens as a document. Its headings, lists, tables, links and footnotes are kept, so it reads like any other document here, with an outline you can jump around. The assistant can also go straight to a section by its heading. A line at the top says who wrote the file and when it was last saved, from the file itself, and how many pictures aren't shown. Press Original at the end of that line to see the file as it looks in Word, with its fonts, page layout and pictures, and Text to go back. Word documents can't be edited in Filement: the text shown is read out of the file you uploaded.
• Plain text is read whatever it's called: .csv, .json, .yaml, source files, logs, and anything else whose contents are text, such as a code snippet saved from a chat as Untitled.coffee. Text saved as UTF-8, UTF-16 or in an older Windows encoding all reads correctly.
• Images get a description instead. A model writes down what the image shows and any text legible in it, so you can find a screenshot of an error message by searching for the error.
• A scanned PDF, where the pages are pictures of text, has nothing to extract. The document says so, instead of leaving you to find out through a search that returns nothing.
• Very long files are read up to a limit. When the text stops short, the document says so.

This runs in the background, usually within seconds of the upload. Wherever it can, extraction runs in your own browser, and nothing is sent anywhere until it has.

Filement works through a large upload a few files at a time, so it can take a while for every file to be searchable and summarised. Anything that fails is retried on its own. If you run the workspace, Settings → General lists, under Background work, what is still being read or indexed and what failed, with a Retry for the failures.

The item menu

Right-click anything (a card on the board, a folder in the sidebar, a line in the recently edited list, a node in the knowledge graph) for Open, Download, Rename, Add a note, Move to…, Lock and Move to Trash, plus two groups. Share ▸ holds Copy link, Public link… and Who can see this…; Connections ▸ holds Connect to…, Versions…, Show related and Re-check with AI. Point at or click a group to open it beside the menu (the menu steps back while it's open); point at another row, press Esc or the left arrow key to close it again. Cards also have a … button that opens the same menu. On a touch screen that button is the way in, because press and hold on a card starts a drag.

The menu is the same wherever the item appears, including on the item's own page. Open a folder or a document and the … in its header offers exactly what right-clicking it did, minus the Open you no longer need. Anything you can't do is left out, with two exceptions. Share and Who can see this always show, and answer honestly, because whether you may hand out a link deserves a real answer and not a missing line.

Right-clicking a project offers Rename, Re-check project with AI, and Delete once the project is empty. The … in a project's own header offers the same.

Downloading

Anyone who can open an item can download it, from Download in its menu:

• An uploaded file downloads as the original file.
• A markdown document downloads as a .md file with its current text. If it has images or videos in it, you get a zip instead: the .md plus an _assets folder it links to.
• A folder downloads as a zip of everything inside it that you can see, subfolders kept as folders.
• Several selected items download together as one zip.

In Chrome and Edge a zip is written straight to the place you pick, so a big folder never has to fit in memory; other browsers build it in the tab and save it when it's done. Keep the tab open until it finishes. A file that couldn't be fetched is listed in MISSING.txt inside the zip.

A zip holds at most about 65,000 items and 3.5 GB, so anything bigger comes as several: Name.zip, Name (part 2).zip and so on. Unzip them into the same folder and they make one tree again. A single file too big for any zip downloads on its own beside them.

Moving and renaming

• Drag onto a folder to move an item there. Folders move with everything inside them, across projects too.
• Drag onto a document to relate the two instead.
• Or use Move to… and Rename from an item's menu.

Search

Press ⌘K (or Ctrl+K) anywhere to open search. It matches file names and document text across the workspace, finds folders and projects by name, and jumps to All files, the knowledge graph, Activity, Trash or Settings. To search by meaning, pick Ask about "…" at the bottom of the results. What you typed goes to the assistant as a question, ready to send.

Deleting

Deleting moves an item to Trash, where you can restore it for 30 days.