Home is a space that is always there. It holds what belongs to no one space:
- Topics that hold projects from any space.
- Attached folders: projects that live anywhere on disk, outside your base folder, used where they are.
- Chats: conversations with an agent that need no project at all.
Home has no folder of its own, so it cannot be renamed or deleted.
The Home tile
Home is the first tile in the space strip, set apart from your spaces by a thin line. It wears a house on a teal tile by default and never moves when you reorder the other spaces. Click it to show Home’s tree.
Right-click the tile for its menu. Edit icon and colour, under the note Home is built in. It can’t be renamed or deleted., opens the space dialog with the name locked, so you can pick another icon or colour.
While you are in another space, the Home tile carries a status bubble for the sessions in Home’s Topics, attached folders and chats, the same as any space’s tile.
Home’s tree
From the top:
- The heading reads Home. The … beside it is Home’s menu:
New chat, New topic, Attach folder… (Use a folder from
anywhere on disk. Nothing is moved.) and Edit icon and colour.
Right-click the heading, or the empty part of the tree, for the same menu.
The search button, or
Cmd+Shift+E, filters the tree: Filter topics, folders and chats. - Chats: your chats, newest first, with a + for a new one.
- Topics: the Topics that belong to no space, with a + for a new one.
- Projects: the attached folders, with a + that goes straight to the folder picker.
Each group shows only when it has something in it, with a little space above its heading. Click a group’s heading to collapse it; Tori remembers. Collapsed, the heading shows how many it holds and a status bubble for what is under it.
Each group lists six and folds the rest, see Long groups.
Like any space, Home remembers where you were: switch back to it and the Topic, folder or chat you left on is selected again. With a Topic of Home selected, the title bar reads Home, then the Topic.
With nothing in Home yet, the tree says Chats you start, folders you attach and Topics that cross spaces show up here., with an Attach folder… button.
Attached folders
An attached folder is a project that stays where it is: a client folder in Documents, a clone in Downloads, a repository on another drive. Tori uses it in place and never moves or copies it. Once attached it works like any project: its branches, worktrees, sessions and Topic membership behave the same.
Attached folders live in Home only. To put one in a space instead, use Move to space… in its menu, which moves the folder into the space and stops it being attached. See Move a project into a space.
Projects in your base folder that you leave out of a space when sorting them are attached here, where they are.
Attach a folder
- Click + by the Home heading and pick Attach folder…, or click the + on the Projects heading.
- Pick the folder in the system folder picker.
- The Attach folder dialog shows the Folder, with Change… to pick another, and what Tori found in it (below).
- Name is filled in from the folder’s name, without
.git. Change it if you like. - Click Attach.
Under the name: Tori uses the folder where it is. Nothing is moved or copied, and detaching later leaves it untouched.
What the dialog says it found:
| Found | Card | Also shows |
|---|---|---|
| A plain folder | Plain folder: Not a git repository. Sessions run in this folder; there are no branches or worktrees to show. | Nothing |
| An ordinary clone | Git repository on main: A clone with 4 local branches. It appears with its branches and worktrees like any project. | Remote, such as github.com/acme/site, and Worktrees, such as none besides main |
| A bare repository | Bare repository with 3 worktrees: All three are attached with it. | Each worktree’s branch and folder. They can be anywhere on disk |
Reading the folder never runs git in it. If it takes a moment, the card says Reading folder….
Attaching trusts the folder and its worktrees, since you picked it yourself in the system dialog. See Project trust.
Attach stays disabled, under Tori can’t attach this folder, when the folder is:
- your home folder or the whole disk: Pick a project folder, not your home folder or the whole disk.
- inside your base folder, as a space or a project in one: This folder is inside your base folder, so it’s already in a space. A project Tori could not place in a space can be attached, see Projects outside a space.
- the folder that holds your base folder: This folder holds your base folder. Pick a project folder inside it.
- Tori’s own folder: This folder holds Tori’s own files.
- already attached: Already attached as acme-site.
- inside an attached folder, or holding one: This folder is inside acme-site, which is already attached., or This folder holds acme-site, which is already attached.
- a worktree of another repository: This is a worktree of acme-site. Attach that repository instead.
New worktrees for an attached repository go where they go for any project:
into .tori/worktrees/ for an ordinary clone, beside the others for a bare
repository.
How an attached folder looks
An attached project’s tile wears a small arrow badge, read out as Attached
folder. It shows wherever the project appears: in the tree, on a Topic’s
member rows and in the pickers. Hover the row and its right end shows the
folder it sits in, such as ~/Documents/clients, in place of its status.
When the folder is missing
When the folder is gone, or the drive it is on is unplugged, the row’s tile turns dashed and faint, and a warning mark, read out as Folder missing, takes its right end. The menu’s heading reads Missing. Open or select the row for the note:
Tori can’t find /Volumes/Archive/thesis. The drive may be unplugged, or the folder was moved. Sessions from the old place stay there.
- Locate… opens the folder picker. Pick where the folder is now and the project follows it, with its name, settings, trust, branch records and issue links. Sessions recorded at the old path stay there, so they drop out of its history.
- Detach forgets it, see below.
The row’s menu holds only those two. Tori checks again when the window comes to the front, so a folder that comes back, a drive plugged in again, returns to normal by itself.
Detach a folder
Detaching never touches the disk. The last row of an attached project’s menu is Detach…, The folder stays where it is, in place of Remove project.
The confirmation is titled Detach acme-site? and shows the folder’s path, And everything in it, including .git, tagged Stays on disk. It says what Tori forgets, for example Tori forgets this folder: its 2 sessions close and it leaves onboarding-v2. Attach it again any time.
On Detach:
- the project’s sessions close and its tabs go;
- it leaves every Topic it is in. A Topic it was the only project of is deleted with it, and the confirmation names it first: onboarding-v2 has no other project, so it is deleted with the detach.
- the folder, its
.gitand every transcript stay where they are.
Chats
A chat is a conversation with an agent that needs no project, branch or worktree. Ask a question, draft a document, work through a CSV.
Start a chat
In Home, press Cmd+N, click the + on the Chats heading, or pick
New chat from Home’s … menu. In a named space the same keys start a
chat in that space, see Chats in a space. New Chat is also in the File menu and the
command palette. While a terminal has the focus, Cmd+N goes to the program
running in it.
Tori adds a row, New chat, at the top of Chats. The composer sits at the bottom of the window, as in any chat, reading Ask anything. Drop files here to attach them. Pick the agent and model as in any new chat.
The first send starts the session, and the row takes its name from your first message.
Each chat runs in its own folder that Tori keeps for it, under
~/.config/tori/chats/.home/ for Home’s. You never pick it or see it in the tree. Forks,
rewinds and handoffs made in a chat stay in that chat: they run in the same
folder and see the same files, and the row shows the newest.
A chat open
The title bar reads Home, then the chat’s name. The chat is a tab like any other, so files you open sit beside it, but a chat’s tab strip has no launch button and no Session history: one chat is one conversation.
The chat’s menu works as in any chat, with two differences:
- Send to a new chat starts a new chat of its own in Home, at the top of Chats, and sends the composer’s text there.
- Fork this chat keeps the fork in the same chat, so the row shows the fork as its newest.
A Home chat never shows the Another chat is already running in this worktree. note: it has no worktree to share.
The chat row
Each row shows the chat’s name and when it was last active: now within the hour, 2h, Yesterday, a weekday such as Mon for the last week, then a date such as Oct 28. While its agent is working or waiting on you, the time gives way to its status. Right-click the row for its menu.
The row menu:
| Item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Rename… | Renames the chat. Before the first send it reads Named from its first message and does nothing |
| Delete chat | Asks Delete Plan a trip?: Its conversation and the files it made are removed. This cannot be undone. Delete chat stops and deletes every session in the chat, then its folder with everything the agent wrote there |
Artifacts
With a chat selected, the right panel has one mode, Artifacts: the files the chat produced and the files you gave it. Show or hide the panel as usual.
The heading says how many there are. Below it, two groups:
- Made in this chat: files the agent wrote to the chat’s folder. The
agent’s own settings folder,
.claude, and other names starting with a dot are left out. - Added by you: files you pasted or dropped into any of the chat’s sessions.
Each row shows the file’s kind and size, such as Markdown and 1.2 KB, or CSV and 2.1 MB. While the agent is writing a file, its row reads editing with a spinner.
Click a row to open the file as a tab beside the chat: Markdown renders, images show, and anything else opens in the editor. The row for the file in front is highlighted. The list follows the chat’s folder as files appear and change, and picks up new attachments when a turn ends.
With nothing yet, the panel says Nothing here yet: Files this chat writes, and files you drop into it, show up here.
On the phone
The phone shows Home in its space switcher when it has attached folders, with their worktrees and sessions as for any space. Chats stay on the Mac.