Solo chat or team chat

Every chat in Tana is either a solo conversation with the AI or a conversation with teammates. The two work the same way, with one difference:

Solo chat: You and the AI. The AI responds to every message.
Team chat: You, teammates, and optionally the AI. The AI stays quiet by default. Mention @Tana when you want a response, so human conversation is not interrupted.

In both cases, the AI has the same capabilities: reading your workspace, creating and updating documents, invoking skills, and connecting to your integrations.

Starting a chat

There are several ways to start a conversation with AI in Tana:

Today: The "Ask or Capture…" bar below the date header in Today. Each message starts a fresh solo chat pinned to the selected date.
Space home: The "Ask or start a chat..." bar at the bottom of every space home. Type a message and press enter to create a new chat scoped to that space.
Meetings: Every meeting has two chat surfaces. The private Ask or Capture pill in the bottom bar is yours alone and the AI auto-responds to every message. The shared Group Chat, opened from the call toolbar, is visible to all attendees and stays quiet until you mention @Tana.
Quick chat: Press Cmd+LCtrl+L on the desktop app to open a new chat from anywhere. Press Cmd+Shift+LCtrl+Shift+L to open it with voice dictation active.
Sidebar: Click "New Chat" in the sidebar.
Create menu: Select "Chat" from the create menu.
Documents: Many document types have a contextual chat panel that scopes the conversation to the open document.

Recent chats appear in the sidebar sorted by last activity, with unread indicators for new messages.

Composing a message

Mentions and skills

Reference documents and invoke AI capabilities directly from the message input:

Type @ to search and reference any document in your workspace. The AI receives the referenced document as context. Mentioning @Tana triggers an AI response in chats with other people.
Type / to search and attach a skill. The AI follows the skill's instructions when responding. The same / also accesses emoji and formatting commands.
Type : to open the emoji picker (about 250 common emojis searchable by shortcode). Press : again to close the picker without inserting anything.

Attachments

Add images, audio, video, PDFs, and other files by dragging them into the chat, pasting, or clicking the attach button. Each attachment shows upload progress while it is sending, and Send waits until uploads finish so nothing is silently dropped. Failed uploads can be removed and retried. Images get AI-generated descriptions automatically, and the AI reads PDFs, audio, and video so it can summarize them, answer questions about their content, and embed media inline in its replies.

Voice input

The chat toolbar has two voice modes:

Dictation: Click the microphone button to speak your message. Words appear in the input as you speak. Supports English, Norwegian, and many other languages.
Audio recording: Click the voice button to record an audio clip, preview it, and send as an attachment. The audio is automatically transcribed.

What AI can do

In your workspace

The AI has full access to your workspace content (within your permissions). It can:

Read: Documents, types, fields, meeting transcripts and participants, screen capture screenshots, calendar events, skill definitions, previous chats, tables, attached PDFs, and uploaded audio and video
Search: Keyword search, semantic search, relationships between documents
Create: Docs, tasks, typed entries, types with fields, skills, artifacts, and AI-generated images
Update: Titles, content, fields, calendar events, space configuration, table data, and type definitions
Delete: Any document

Updates and deletes and creates all appear as proposals for your review. AI never changes your workspace without your approval.

Connected tools

When you connect integrations, the AI can act on them from chat:

GitHub: Search and create issues, review and merge pull requests, read code and files, comment on issues and PRs
Slack: Send messages to channels or people, list channels and users
Linear: Search, create, and update issues
Coding tools: Hand off the current document or chat as a self-contained prompt to Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Lovable, or v0. Triggered by phrasings like "create a PR" or "send this to Cursor"; when more than one tool is enabled, you pick.

Configure integrations in Settings. See Integrations.

Managing access

The AI can also propose changes to a document's access: restricting it to specific participants with editor or admin roles, opening it back up to everyone in its space or event, and toggling the Guest Link (anyone with the link can view). Access changes go through the same proposal approval flow as the rest of the AI's edits, and the proposal preview shows a clear access callout before you accept.

Default content language

Every organization picks a default content language in Settings, Organization, Language. The AI writes its replies, generated artifacts, outcomes, summaries, and document titles in that language no matter which language the conversation is happening in. Meeting transcription stays multilingual (auto-detected per speaker) so a mixed-language call still transcribes everyone correctly.

Usage limits

Each organization has monthly and rolling short-window AI usage limits, plus a shared org-wide pool. As a bucket approaches 80 percent, an amber "Approaching usage limit" callout appears at the top of every chat panel and a soft warning lands in Activity. When a bucket is exceeded, the AI returns a red "Usage limit reached" callout instead of a reply. Your own monthly and 5-hour caps are visible as progress bars in Settings, User, Usage.

Web search and image generation

Models that support web search can look up current information when your question goes beyond your workspace. Results include citation links to sources. Web search availability varies by model.

The AI can also generate images from text descriptions. Generated images become image documents in your workspace.

Reviewing changes

Every AI-generated document, edit, or deletion appears as a proposal you review before it takes effect. Proposals show up as inline cards on the message that produced them, so you can see what the AI did and decide on it in place. Each pending proposal shows a Location and access pill telling you where the new document will live and who will see it, so the consequences are visible before you accept. Accept individually, reject, or iterate by chatting with the AI to refine before accepting.

When the AI assigns a task to you while acting on your behalf, you do not get a notification for your own work. Assigning to someone else still notifies them, attributed to you.

See Proposals for the full review workflow.

Choosing a model

Tana supports models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Switch models at any time during a conversation. The change takes effect on the next message.

Models are grouped by cost:

Cheap: Smaller, faster models for simple tasks
Moderate: Balanced cost and capability
Expensive: Most capable models for complex reasoning

Some models support reasoning with configurable effort levels (low, medium, high). Some support web search. Both capabilities are indicated in the model selector.

Clarifying questions

The AI may ask clarifying questions before proceeding with a task. When this happens, the chat input is replaced with the question and a set of options. Each card also includes a Something else free-text fallback at the bottom so you can answer in your own words instead of being forced into one of the suggested choices. Pick an option, type a custom answer, or skip the question.

Side panels

The chat toolbar opens side panels for:

Outcomes: Pending proposals and accepted outcomes from this conversation
In common: Documents shared between chat participants. Only visible when the chat has multiple participants.

Agents

Beyond the default Tana assistant, you can create custom agents with their own tools, settings, prompt, and schedules.

Open a custom agent and click Customize next to the title to configure:

Tools: Pick which tools the agent can use, either by enabling whole bundles or by choosing individual tools
Settings: Model, temperature, and other generation parameters
Context fields: What the agent reads on every invocation
Prompt: The instructions the agent follows, edited inline. An Improve Your Agent helper opens a chat that can read and rewrite the prompt with you.
Schedules: Pick days and times for the agent to run automatically. Each schedule can carry an optional Additional prompt to vary what the agent does on different runs.

The agent page also shows the agent's recent outputs and chats so you can see what it has been doing.

Built-in agents show a System agent badge instead of Customize. They are managed by Tana and cannot be edited.

Reporting issues

If the AI produces an incorrect or unhelpful response, right-click the message and select "Report Bad Chat." Describe what went wrong and the full conversation is attached automatically for analysis.

When an AI run fails outright, the chat displays a red callout with a one-line, actionable reason: provider rejection (e.g. "image exceeds 2000 pixels on the longest side"), idle timeout, too many tool steps, repeated tool errors, stalled response, or a generic "Something went wrong" fallback. Cancelled and "Usage limit reached" keep their pill style. The AI also recovers automatically from malformed tool calls before giving up.