# Workspaces, accounts, and limits > A workspace holds agents, connections, and billing. You act in it through a workspace account, its admins set Workspace limits, and they can search what its accounts send. A workspace is a shared context: its members, its agents, its connected accounts, and its billing. Every person has a personal side of Bolter that is just theirs, and can belong to any number of workspaces on top of it. A workspace does not hold chats. A chat belongs to the people in it and lives as long as it has members, whatever mix of workspaces they come from. What a workspace gets is exactly two things, both described on this page: its admins can search what its accounts send, and its limits can say whom its accounts may share chats with. For chats themselves, see [Chats, chat admins, and adding people](https://bolter.chat/help/access/chat-membership). ## Do I need a new workspace? Only when you want to work with other people. Your personal workspace already holds everything you use on your own, including anything you have connected yourself, so if you work alone you can stay there. Create a new workspace when a group of people should share agents, connected accounts, and billing, for example a team starting a project together. See [Billing and paying for usage](https://bolter.chat/help/billing) for how a workspace's plan works. ## Your accounts You are one person with one handle, acting through accounts: a personal account, plus one account for each workspace you belong to. Which account is speaking in a chat is always visible to that chat. Your personal account is anyone's to see; a workspace account shows that you belong to that workspace, so who can see it follows the workspace's membership visibility, below. A chat can admit more than one of your accounts. When it does, switching is in place, in the same chat: the switch is posted with both ends named ("alice switched account: alice@acme to alice"), and everything you already sent keeps the signature it was sent under. What you send as a workspace account falls within that workspace's search reach, described below. What you send as your personal account is nobody's but the chat's. ## Who can see that you belong to a workspace Every workspace is private unless its admins make it public. While a workspace is private, your account there (dana@acme) is visible to: - the workspace's own members - people in a chat where you are taking part as dana@acme, while you are there - people you are invited to a chat with, or who are invited to one you are in as dana@acme, while the invitation is open Everyone else sees you, but not that you belong to Acme. It is per person: sharing a chat with dana@acme tells nobody anything about anyone else at Acme. It follows the present, not the past: once you leave that chat, or leave Acme, the people there stop seeing it, and older lines in the chat's history name you without the workspace for them ("Dana joined." rather than "Dana (dana@acme) joined."). A private workspace cannot be looked up by its @handle by anyone outside it. People who can see dana@acme can add you to a chat as dana@acme, which shows it to that chat's members too. Anyone else adding you picks from the accounts they can see, so they add you as your personal account instead. When a workspace is public, anyone who can find you on Bolter can see that you belong to it and add you to chats as its member, and anyone can look the workspace up by its @handle. ## Finding your workspaces On a computer, point at or click the picker at the top of the left sidebar: the panel it opens lists every workspace you belong to, each with its unread count. Picking one opens its page and narrows the sidebar's list to it (see [Your sidebar, your lists and your settings](https://bolter.chat/help/your-sidebar-and-settings)). The plus beside the Workspaces heading in that panel creates a new workspace, and so does New workspace in the create menu (the pencil at the top of the sidebar). Your name at the foot of the sidebar opens your personal workspace. On a phone, tap **You** in the bar at the bottom of the screen. Each workspace you belong to has its own row there, and tapping one opens its page. Under them, **Invite people** opens the invite box for a workspace you run, and **Manage workspaces** is the full list, with each workspace's unread count, a tick on the one you are in, your pending invitations, and a button to create a new workspace. ## Joining a workspace A workspace invites you, and your account there exists from the moment you accept, not before. The invitation waits in Requests, at the top of your chat list under Invitations, and in Settings under Invitations, and a notification points you to it. You can Join or Decline from any of them. Declining closes the invitation and tells whoever sent it. Accepting creates the account, and Bolter confirms it plainly: you are in Acme as dana@acme. The reach that comes with it is the one this page describes: Acme admins can search what dana@acme sends, wherever it is sent, and Acme's Workspace limits can set whom dana@acme may share chats with. That is the whole of a workspace's reach into your account, and both halves stay visible on the account's profile afterwards. ## Inviting someone who is new to Bolter Workspace admins can invite by email, and the address does not need a Bolter account yet. Bolter lets a set number of new people sign up each day, and an invitation to a new address is that person's place: they never wait in the sign-up queue, and their account is created when they accept. Those signups come out of the same daily invite allowance you have for inviting people to Bolter generally, so there is a limit on how many brand new people you can invite in one day. If you reach it, Bolter tells you at the point of inviting, and you can either try again the next day or ask another admin to send it. Inviting someone who already has a Bolter account never counts against the allowance, and neither does re inviting an address you already invited. If the invitation email cannot be sent, the invitation is not created at all. Bolter tells you right away, the attempt does not use up your allowance, and the fix is simply to press invite again. ## Admins and members "Admin" on its own always means a workspace admin. Chats have their own chat admins, a separate role held per chat; see [Chats, chat admins, and adding people](https://bolter.chat/help/access/chat-membership). Workspace admins can: - see and change billing and usage - invite people to the workspace and rescind invitations - connect workspace level accounts (for example the workspace's Slack, Notion, Linear, or GitHub) - decide the workspace's grant requests, and the asks its Workspace limits raise - use Message search, and read the audit log, which also records every change to the workspace's blueprints (see [Seeing who changed a blueprint](https://bolter.chat/help/blueprint-history)) - manage the workspace's agents, and hold the rules of its shared agents - set Membership visibility: Private (the default) or Public, in the workspace's Settings. The About tab states it under "Who can see this workspace's members?" Any member can: - create agents in the workspace and set blueprints up in it, and keep creator rights over those agents, unless an admin has turned off agent creation for members in Governance ("Who can create agents") - register MCP servers, which an admin then decides the grant requests for - chat with shared agents - link their own personal accounts (for example their own Slack, Notion, Linear, LinkedIn, or X), which stay private to them ## Workspace limits Workspace limits is one policy: whom the workspace's accounts, people and agents alike, may share a chat with. It renders as a choice between two values: "No approval needed", the default, or "Acme admins", naming the workspace's own admins. While it says "No approval needed", nothing ever asks the workspace anything. While it says "Acme admins", adds that cross the workspace's boundary go to its admins first: putting an Acme account into a chat with anyone outside Acme, or adding an outside account, personal accounts included, to a chat where an Acme account already is. A chat that is entirely Acme asks nothing. While the row says "Acme admins", a "Personal agents" sub-row appears beneath it: a limited workspace can waive its check for personal agents wholesale, so someone's own agent joining asks nothing. That is off by default. The sub-row is hidden while the row says "No approval needed", since nothing is asked of anyone then and there is no check to waive. Admins answer an ask in one of two shapes, and both are visible on this page, listed beneath the row and revocable there: - a per chat allowance lets one named outside account into one chat - a standing allowance names a whole workspace, and adds it covers stop asking A standing allowance always names a workspace. There is none for personal accounts: letting a personal account in is always a per chat allowance, created by approving the ask. An allowance is one sided: it settles this workspace's side and nothing else. The other side's own limits still speak for themselves. Two guarantees hold everywhere. The policy is never a dead end: a gated pick renders as an ask, not a wall ("Needs Acme admins.", with the fuller explanation in the strip under the picks). And tightening never evicts: switching the row to admins, or revoking an allowance, changes what commits next and never removes anyone from a chat they are already in. ## Message search A workspace can see what its accounts send. Its admins have a Message search surface covering the messages the workspace's accounts, human and agent, sent in any chat: the text, files, and cards a chat renders. It never shows what anyone else sent in those chats, and never an agent's internal working. The search sees messages as they stand: edits and deletions apply, and a deleted chat's messages are gone with it. Nothing is kept beyond the chats themselves. Every search an admin runs is itself logged. This reach is stated when you accept the workspace's invitation and shown on the account's profile, and nowhere else: no event in a chat announces it. It is also the only read a workspace has: an admin who is not in a chat still cannot open it. See [Who can see what](https://bolter.chat/help/access/who-can-see-what). ## Leaving a workspace Ending a workspace account, by leaving or by removal, is structural: the account's chat memberships, its grants, and any references to it in agents' rules end everywhere at once. What the account sent stays in its chats, and stays within the workspace's search reach, for as long as those chats live. Your personal account is untouched, and the workspace's console never names it: a workspace's actions only ever affect its own accounts. ## Billing and connectors are workspace scoped Billing is per workspace, not per person or per agent. A workspace you create gets its own billing and starts on the Free plan: it never shares a plan or a balance with a workspace you already belong to unless you choose to bill it to another workspace. The Create workspace dialog's Billing section lets you pick another workspace you admin to bill usage to, or use the new workspace's own plan. Its Create and upgrade button creates the workspace and opens its Billing and Usage tab so you can pick a paid plan straight away. Account links and connections also land in one specific workspace, and only that workspace's agents can ever be granted them. If you want an account usable in two workspaces, it must be linked in each. See [Billing and paying for usage](https://bolter.chat/help/billing) for payment methods, bolts, and billing to another workspace, and [Connectors overview](https://bolter.chat/help/connectors/index) for how connections work. ## Deleting a workspace Deleting a workspace is a workspace admin's act, from Settings under Danger zone. A personal account cannot be deleted this way at all: deleting your personal side would mean deleting your Bolter account, which is a separate action in Settings. Before anything happens you are shown how many members, agents, and chats would be affected, and you have to type the workspace name to confirm. Deleting takes effect straight away for everyone, but it is reversible for 30 days. See "Undoing a deletion" below. Deleting a workspace ends: - every agent that lives in it - every member's account there, which ends those accounts' chat memberships everywhere. A chat that still has other members carries on without them; a chat left with no members at all ends with them, for good. - pending invitations to it - its secrets, and the access agents had to its connected accounts - its standing and per chat allowances under Workspace limits Its connected accounts stay linked but can no longer be used, because the access agents held against them is withdrawn. They are only unlinked for good when the 30 days are up. If the workspace is on a paid plan, or has automatic top ups turned on, deleting is blocked until you cancel the plan and turn top ups off in Billing. A workspace on the free or trial plan can be deleted straight away. See [Billing and paying for usage](https://bolter.chat/help/billing). ## Undoing a deletion For 30 days after you delete a workspace, it is held rather than erased. An admin sees it under "Recently deleted" in Settings, with the number of days left, and one Restore button brings it back. Nobody else sees the workspace during that time, and its agents do nothing. Restoring returns the member list and each member's account, the files, the agents and their memory, and the standing responsibilities agents were running. Members get the workspace back in their switcher without doing anything. Places in chats do not come back: a restore is not a way to reappear in a chat, so people rejoin the chats they were in by being added again, with the current chat admins' say. Three things stay switched off even after a restore, because a deletion is also how a workspace cuts off access: - the access agents had to linked accounts, which needs granting again. The accounts themselves are still linked, so there is nothing to reconnect - workspace secrets, which need entering again - pending invitations, which need sending again The workspace's handle is held for those 30 days too, so nobody can take the name while you still have the option to restore. When the 30 days are up, everything above is erased for good, and the handle becomes available for a new workspace. Source: https://bolter.chat/help/workspaces