Getting started

Select "Space" from the create menu. New spaces are private to you by default. Add team members through the location and access settings when you are ready to share, or restrict access further on individual documents inside the space.

Opening the create menu from inside a space creates a subspace nested under that space. See Nested spaces.

Select "Doc" from the create menu, or from the "+" button on any space home or date in Today. A Doc is the default item kind for freeform writing, and the create menu, types table, space home buttons, slash command, and AI tools all use the label Doc. The slash-menu aliases "note" and "document" still match the same option, so existing muscle memory keeps working.

When you create a typed entry inline (from the kanban board's "+" buttons or the slash command), the Inline document popover protects in-flight work: while the new doc is still in proposal state, clicking outside or pressing Escape no longer discards what you typed. Only the Create button (to keep it) and the Discard trash icon (to drop it) close the popover. Editing an existing doc is unchanged: outside-click and Escape still dismiss the popover.

The fastest way to create a type is to ask AI. In any AI chat, describe what you want to track ("a Bug type with priority, assignee, and steps to reproduce") and the AI will create it, with fields, workflow, and AI instructions. No templates to pick from, no pre-made catalogue. Every type you need, you can just ask for.

To create one manually, select "Type" from the create menu. Give it a name, add fields, and optionally enable a workflow. Types can live in a space or at the organization level.

The sidebar is the main navigation in Tana. It sits on the left side of the screen as a flat list of destinations: Today, Activity, Tasks, People, Library, and your spaces. A bottom section groups Search and Account. There are no tabs.

On wider screens the sidebar is always visible and can be resized by dragging its right edge. On narrower screens it appears as an overlay when opened.

The create menu is accessible from the pencil icon in the sidebar toolbar, or from the "+" button on space home pages and dates in Today. It is a searchable palette with these options:

• Meeting, Doc, Canvas, Task, Chat, Type, Space, Skill
• Custom types: Any types you have defined, grouped by space

When used from a space context, created items are scoped to that space and the Space option is hidden.

Tasks open as inline cards rather than navigating away. Everything else navigates to the new document.

Open search from the Search entry in the sidebar, or with Cmd+PCtrl+P from anywhere, including while editing a document. It opens as a popover hosting the same browse interface: a search field for full-text search across Tana, the filter bar, and, when you have not typed a query or set a filter, the per-section index. On iPad and other touch devices it opens as a bottom sheet that stays clear of the on-screen keyboard.

The Library and Search share one filter bar of round pills:

• Space: show items from a specific space (Search only)
• Meetings and Chats: quick pills that narrow to those kinds
• Created by: a people picker, with you pinned to the top as "(you)" and an "Anyone" option to clear it
• Visibility: narrow by who can see an item, Any, Private to me, Shared with me, Restricted, Open, or Anyone with the link for items shared by link
• More (⋯): a type palette for any other kind, including the types you have defined

Without a query, the filters act as a browse mode. Recent items appear under "Recently Updated".

Narrow to Meetings only and the view becomes a dedicated meetings table (title, the space it lives in, time, attendees, and a lock for private ones), sorted with the most recent first. Two sub-filters appear next to the Meetings pill: a time window (Upcoming, Today, or Past, with Today in your local zone) and Attendees, a multi-select people picker that shows meetings including everyone you pick. The Chats pill, Created by, and the type palette hide while meetings-only is active.

Open the Library to browse everything in Tana by kind. The home shows an ordered preview of each category, Spaces · Meetings · Tasks · Types · Chats · Agents · People · Skills · Canvases · Docs, each with a See all link to its own page. Empty categories hide themselves. A category page shows the category title, a Library breadcrumb to step back out, and an inline search field; section routes (Spaces, Chats, Agents, Skills, Canvases, Docs) also carry the shared Created by and Visibility filter pills, and Chats adds an MCP pill that narrows to chats started from an MCP client. The Types page adds a single-select space filter. The Skills section lists only the skills your organization has authored; Tana's built-in system skills are filtered out. Media, meaning images, audio, video, and uploaded files, does not appear in the Library, space browse, or Search; it still renders inside the chats and documents that embed it. Anything that does not live in a space or on a meeting lives in the Library, and its location pill shows which category it belongs to; a plain task points to the Tasks view. In the sidebar, each space can be expanded to show the types defined in it. Space home uses the same section index, scoped to that space.

Activity sits right below Today as a two-column dashboard: your Notifications on the left and Recents, a time-grouped list of recently updated items, on the right. The columns stack on narrow screens, and the sidebar entry carries a blue badge with your unread count.

Notifications cover when someone:

• Adds you to a document or meeting
• Assigns you a task
• Starts a call you are waiting on
• Sends you a chat message
• Archives or restores a type in your organization (the row carries the type title and a link to its panel)

Each notification shows who triggered it, what it is about, and when it happened. Click it to navigate to the source, and unread ones show a blue dot. "Mark all read" in the Notifications header clears them, and a "+" in the toolbar opens the create menu.

Both columns start collapsed and expand with a "View more" or "Show more" control. Recents carries the same filter bar used elsewhere in the Library (Space, the Meetings and Chats pills, Visibility, and the type palette). Narrow Recents to Chats and an MCP pill appears that scopes to chats started from an MCP client; it hides itself when none are in view. A recurring meeting series collapses to a single row, the occurrence closest to now, so the series keeps its place in the recency order without repeating.