Your sidebar, your lists and your settings

The left sidebar holds your chat list and a picker that scopes it to one workspace or all of them, and your own settings live on the Settings screen.

Updated 21 October 2026

This page covers the parts of Bolter that belong to you rather than to a workspace: your personal settings, the left sidebar, the Library, and the chat list with the picker that shows one workspace or all of them. For the workspace dashboard, your Home page, the address bar and other screens, see Finding your way around.

Personal settings

Your own settings live on the Settings screen, separate from any workspace: notifications, account, billing and usage, referrals, sessions, chats, archived, appearance, and privacy. Sign out and Delete account sit at the foot of the list.

Requests is not one of them: the one inbox described in Finding your way around opens from the Notifications panel in the left sidebar, and has its own address at /requests. See Workspaces, accounts, and limits for workspace invitations and Chats, chat admins, and adding people for chat ones.

Notifications holds your default notification level for chats (all, mentions, or none), Working hours, Out of office, the Product emails toggle, and, in a browser, the switch for desktop notifications.

Working hours limits notifications to the hours you choose: pick a start and end time and the days it applies on, and outside that window nothing buzzes. Nothing is lost, the notification still reaches your bell and still counts as unread. Times use your own timezone, so travelling moves the window with you. An end time earlier than the start runs through midnight for a night shift, and the window belongs to the day it starts on. It starts out set to 09:00 to 18:00, Monday to Friday, so switching it on without changing anything leaves your weekend quiet. Tick Saturday or Sunday to include them, and at least one day stays selected.

Out of office covers a whole absence. Switch it on, pick when you are back, and add an optional note such as who to ask meanwhile. Until then nothing on your devices buzzes, while the bell and unread counts keep filling. People who share a chat or workspace see an amber dot on your avatar and "Away until" your return date, and your agents know you are away so they say so rather than promise a reply. It clears itself when the date passes.

Product emails are occasional product updates and announcements sent to your email address. They are off unless you ticked the optional box when you created your account, and you can turn them on or off here at any time. The unsubscribe link inside one of those emails turns the toggle off as well. Emails about your account itself, such as sign-in codes, invitations and the welcome email you get when you sign up, arrive regardless of the toggle.

Archived is a page of its own in Settings, where the chats and the projects you have archived are listed together. In the list of settings it sits just after Chats, because it is about your chats without being one of their display settings. Archived projects never appear in the sidebar. In the One column layout, More then Archived chats opens this page; in Classic, Archived Chats in your account menu lists archived chats in the sidebar instead. Archived projects come first when you have any, each with a count of what it is still holding; archived chats follow, each carrying its own name and picture and when you archived it. Press a project row to close Settings and open that project's own page, or press a chat row to jump straight into that chat. Each row also has Restore, which puts it back. Once you have 8 or more archived chats, a search box appears above the archived chats list.

Appearance holds the color scheme (light, dark, or follow your device) and the font. The font applies across the whole app, and it is saved on the device you set it on rather than following you between machines. The default is Atkinson Hyperlegible Next, a typeface drawn to pull look-alike characters such as capital I, lowercase l, and the digit 1 away from each other. You can switch to Inter, the previous default, or to your device's own font. Code and ids stay in the monospace font whichever face you choose. The app canvas is always ruled with the same faint grid the sign-in screen stands on, in whichever color scheme you are using; there is no setting for it. On a computer that ruling carries through the top of a chat: the chat header has no panel of its own and sits straight on the canvas, divided from the messages by a single thin line, the way the header looks while you are setting your first agent up. A chat tint sits in Appearance too, on a computer; the message text size sits under Chats.

The Show tasks scope sits under Chats too. It controls the Tasks card of in-flight agent work in the left sidebar; on a phone the same list appears as the Tasks lane on Home. "My work" shows only runs by your own agents or runs you started yourself; "All chats I'm in" shows everything running in the chats you are in. Finished runs linger as receipts until you clear them: the tick at the top of the card clears them all in one click.

If your workspace has agents' steps and sources, there is no setting for it: it is on for everyone in the workspace. When an agent's reply posts, the places it read settle into one quiet spot where the agent's other details used to open from; press it to see them and how the reply's claims hold up against them. It only shows in chats of a workspace that has the feature. What an agent is doing while it works shows in every chat (see Agents, ownership, and visibility).

Chats also carries "Show responsibilities in chats", off until you turn it on. Off, a conversation shows no card when an agent takes on or finishes a responsibility, and no "took" or "completed" line under its reply; the workspace Responsibilities tab and the agent's profile still list them. On, the cards and lines come back in every chat and thread. The setting applies to this device only, and changes nothing for anyone else in the chat.

The left sidebar

On a computer the sidebar comes in two layouts, chosen in Settings under Appearance as Layout. One column, which every account starts on, puts everything in a single sidebar: search, Bookmarks, Threads, the bell and the create menu along the top; under them a picker that scopes every list to one workspace, one project, or everything (point at it or click it to see your projects and workspaces and switch); All, Chats, Library and Omni to pick what the list shows; a filter row with the View button; a Pinned section for the apps and chats you pinned, shown once something is pinned or while you drag a chat; and your chats under Today, Yesterday, This week and Before this week. While the picker is narrowed to a project or workspace, an amber dot on it means something outside needs you. The View button at the end of the filter row sets how the list looks on every tab: Recent keeps it in time order, Unread first gathers everything with unread messages under Unread at the top, and Relaxed, Compact and Dense set how much room each row takes. To pin a chat, drop it on Pinned or right-click the row and choose Pin. To pin an app, open Apps and use the pin button on its row in the Library list. To unpin a pinned app, or file it in a project, right-click its row under Pinned. The sidebar button at the bottom folds it to a narrow strip: those buttons, tiles for the scope and what the list shows, pinned things named, the rest as pictures. Hover a tile to change it, or the bell, Threads or Bookmarks to peek. Classic is a strip of icons instead. Only the sidebar changes; the rest of the window works the same. The choice is per device; a phone has one layout. The rest of this section describes Classic.

In Classic the sidebar is a narrow strip of icons down the left edge. Workspaces holds the top on its own. Under it are the rows that say what is waiting on you, Chats, Library and Notifications, then Tasks, an icon like the others with a status dot on its corner; its panel lists what your agents have running. The middle block is your assistant's row, which is also the way back to your Home page, then your projects. Blueprints, Search and More hold the bottom. Creating a new agent lives in the chat list's header, beside the new chat button. Resting your pointer on a row names it in a tooltip and does nothing else. Click one and a panel opens beside the rail holding what that row leads to; click the same row again, or the close button at the top right of the panel, and it goes away. Whether the names stay showing beside the icons is Sidebar labels, in Settings under Appearance. It has three settings. Auto, which it starts on, shows the names when the window has room to spare and keeps to the icons when it doesn't, so a wide display shows them while a half-width window on the same screen won't. On keeps them showing at any width the window is wide enough for, and Off never shows them. Nothing on the sidebar moves just because your pointer crossed it. In a narrow window the panel behaves differently: see the end of this section. More is the overflow of everything the strip has no icon for: your profile, billing, archived chats, settings, the tutorial, the light and dark switch, signing out, and any dashboards your account can see.

The panel is the sidebar's second half, and which of them you get is whichever row you clicked: Chats holds your chat list, headed by the direct messages waiting on a reply from you, Workspaces the list of workspaces you can switch to, a project everything in that project, Library everything your agents have made, Tasks everything your agents have running, Notifications everything you have been told about. Only one is open at a time, so clicking another row moves the panel to it rather than opening a second one. That list can be cut down with a row of filters at its top, one per kind of notification: things that need you, mentions, agent activity, responsibilities, and everything else, each showing how many unread it holds, with an unread-only switch beside them. Clicking a filter shows only that kind, and clicking it again brings everything back. Holding Alt while clicking one (or pressing and holding it on a phone) hides just that kind and leaves the rest, shown as a struck-through filter until it is let back in. Marking everything read follows the filters you have set. With none applied it clears the whole list; with a filter on, it clears only the kinds you are looking at and leaves the rest unread, including the ones further back than the panel has loaded. When nothing in view is unread, the button is not there. Resting on a notification that came from a chat also reveals a small mute button, so a noisy chat can be quieted right from the row it sent. Nothing is open until you open it, and Bolter remembers which panel you left open across reloads, so a panel you set up beside your work is still there the next time. Search and Blueprints have no panel; they just take you there, and whatever panel you had open stays where it is beside them. Workspaces and your assistant's row do both at once: one click opens the panel and takes you somewhere, the workspace's dashboard and your Home page respectively. The assistant's panel, Omni requests, lists your past conversations with it. Right click a row there to archive that conversation, and use the archive button at the top of the panel to see the ones you have put away.

The Library: everything you have made

Library sits between Chats and Notifications on the sidebar, and it is one list of everything in your account that is not a chat, across every workspace you are in: the apps your agents have built, the files saved into a workspace, and the artifacts an agent made inside a chat and never filed anywhere. It is the version of "where did that thing go" you can ask from anywhere, rather than having to be in the right workspace first. The icon is not on the sidebar until your account holds its first app, file or artifact.

The panel searches by name, narrows to one kind or one workspace, and keeps a Pinned block at the top for the handful of things you keep coming back to. See The Library for all of it.

Showing one workspace, or all of them

If you are in more than one workspace, the Chats panel has a workspace filter: a funnel button beside the panel's other controls. Pressing it opens a list of your workspaces next to the panel, and pressing it again puts the list away. Pick one and your chat list narrows to it. Tasks, threads, notifications, priority and search are never narrowed, and neither is the list of workspaces itself. Library has a workspace picker of its own, which this funnel leaves alone. While the filter is on, the funnel is replaced by the chosen workspace's own icon, so the narrowed state is visible from the panel it shapes; press the icon to switch the filter to a different workspace, or choose "All workspaces" (or press the selected workspace again) to see everything at once. The list starts narrowed to the workspace you are in, so a workspace shows you its own work until you ask for more, and Bolter remembers which way you left it, so it is a mode rather than something to set each time. A chat that none of your workspaces is part of, such as one someone from another workspace added you to, is listed under the workspace you are in that chat as, which is usually your personal one, so it never hides from every view but "All workspaces".

The filter and the Workspaces panel's rows answer two different questions, and they do not move each other. The filter is what you can see. Pressing a workspace row is where you are working: it opens that workspace's home, and new chats and new agents land there. So you can sit in one workspace and still watch every chat you are in, or watch one workspace's chats while working in another. While you are showing all workspaces, the row you are working in is marked with a small house rather than a tick, because a tick would say it is the only thing you are looking at, and it is not. The workspaces in the panel carry their own unread counts, so you can see what is waiting in one you are not currently looking at.

Nothing is ever stranded behind the filter. Opening a chat from somewhere other than the list, a notification, a search result, a mention or a link, switches you back to showing all workspaces if that chat belongs to a different one, so you never end up reading a chat that has no row in your own list. A viewer with one workspace gets no filter, because there is nothing to narrow to.

On a phone the same choice is behind the title at the top of the Chats tab: it reads "Chats" while the list is narrowed to the workspace you are in and "All chats" while it spans everything, and pressing it offers the two. It is the same setting, so narrowing on your phone narrows on your computer too.

The Threads count is how many followed threads have replies you have not read, and there are two ways to clear it. Reading a thread clears that one, and the unread pill on a card in the threads reader doubles as a button if you want to clear it without reading. To clear the lot at once, use "Mark all read", which sits beside the filter in the reader's header and next to the title of the Threads panel. It appears only while something is unread. It covers every thread you follow rather than just the ones on screen, so the filter you have applied makes no difference to it, and muted threads are left alone because they never counted toward the number in the first place. Anything that arrives afterwards, including a reply an agent was still writing when you clicked, comes through as unread as usual.

Threads you follow also keep their chat visible. A new reply in one adds to that chat's unread count in the sidebar and moves the chat up the list, the same as a new message in the main conversation would, though the preview line under the chat's name stays the latest main-conversation message. Opening the chat clears the main-conversation part of the count as usual, but the thread part stays until you read those threads. While you are in the chat, a pill at the top says how many unread replies are waiting and in how many threads; pressing it opens the thread with the oldest unread reply, and it moves on to the next thread as you read until nothing is left. You can dismiss it with its close button for the rest of your visit. Muted threads sit all of this out, and replies in threads you do not follow never light anything up.

Clicking a chat in the Chats panel also shows you which threads the count came from. If the chat has unread replies in threads you follow, one row per thread unfolds under the chat's row, oldest unread first, and clicking one opens that thread beside the chat. While they are showing, the chat's own number counts only its main conversation, because the rows below carry the rest. Clicking the same chat row again folds them away and leaves you in the chat; clicking it once more brings back whatever is still unread. Reading a thread empties its number but keeps its row, so you can see what you have worked through, and going anywhere else puts the list away.

One of those entries is a small card rather than a single line, and it is there whether a panel is open or not. Tasks, under Notifications, is what your agents are working through right now: one line per run, and resting on one shows that run in full beside it, the task, how it is going, how long it has been running and which agent is on it. Clicking the card opens the Tasks panel with the whole list, and anything the card cannot fit is counted on a last line that opens the same list. It is the only card the strip has. The chats you pinned are in the Chats panel, under Pinned at the top of the list, and your apps are in Library with everything else your account holds.

The chats you came back to most recently are in the chat list rather than on the rail. A Recent group sits under Pinned, above the time groups, holding the last few chats you opened, on a phone and on a computer alike. It starts off, and "Recent section" in your Chats settings turns it on for both chat lists. Chats where someone is waiting on you are not a row of their own either: a direct message waiting on a reply from you sits at the top of the Chats panel, and mentions of you and approvals count on Notifications and open in its panel.

Some of these only appear when there is something behind them. Library shows up once your account holds its first app, file or agent-made deliverable, and Notifications once you have one. Tasks is there only while something is running, so a new account sees a much shorter strip than this.

Unread counts show on the icons as a dot, so you can see there is something waiting without opening anything.

An open panel stays open. It keeps its place on screen with the rest of the page beside it rather than behind it, it survives going somewhere else in the app, and it is still there after a reload. The close button at its top right is how you put it away, and so is clicking the row that opened it, or pressing Escape while your pointer is on the sidebar.

A window too narrow to hold a panel beside your work is the exception, and there the panel works the older way: it can only float over the page, so there is nothing to hold in place. Rest your pointer on a row and its panel appears over your work; move the pointer back into the page and it goes again. There is no close button, because there is nothing to close. Clicking a row here opens its panel as well, and never puts it away, so a tap is the way in on a touchscreen. Escape closes it wherever it came up. Widen the window and the panel you last kept open comes back, exactly as you left it.

Drag a panel narrow enough and the controls along its title line run out of room. Rather than cut the title down, the ones at the end of the row move behind a "..." button beside them, the close button included. They do the same thing from there, and they come back onto the row as soon as you widen the panel again.

The apps you use live in Library, alongside your files and everything else your agents have made. See Apps and running code for what that list holds and how to reach an app you have not opened yet.

Your conversations with your assistant are not in that list. They are not chats: they have their own place, they do not appear in the chat list, in search, or in a chat picker, and they are not counted in the chat unread badges. Each question you ask opens its own conversation, and every one of them stays reachable from your assistant's history. On a phone that place is Home in the bottom bar, which is also the screen the app opens on: it holds the box to ask from, what is waiting on you, and every question you have asked before. See Bolter on your phone for the rest of that bar. Opening a conversation from it shows the conversation, its title switches between your conversations when you have several, and the button in its top corner starts a fresh one. See "Your assistant's own place" in Finding your way around.

That includes "What's new in Bolter". It carries a name of its own rather than the subject of a question, but it is still your assistant talking to you, so it sits with the rest of its conversations and not in the chat list.

Tidying your chat list

Pin is the way to keep a chat in front of you. A pinned chat moves into a Pinned group at the top of the chat list, under any new chats you have started and above Recent and your own sections, in every layout and on a phone too, so the same chat is never drawn twice. In a sectioned list Pinned collapses like any header and steps aside while you search or filter. On a computer a pinned chat also appears on the sidebar's Chats entry. Unpin it from the row menu or the unpin button on its sidebar row. Pinning is yours alone. On a phone, swipe a chat row right for Pin (or Unpin) or left for Archive, then tap the button; swipe all the way across to do it in one go.

Right click a chat row (press and hold it on a phone), or open the chat's settings panel. Both carry the three ways out, though Leave is offered a little differently in each.

On a computer the open row menu takes one key per item, shown beside it: R renames, P pins, A archives, M mutes, U marks read or unread, T adds to a project, S handles sections, N starts a new chat, G goes to the main chat, D deletes and L leaves. The project panel's row menu works the same way, with M for Move to project and X for Remove from project.

Archive is the everyday one. The chat leaves your list and nothing changes for anybody else: no message is deleted, nobody is told, and the other people in it see no difference. It stays out of the way until you restore it from Archived in your personal settings, open Archived Chats from your account menu in the sidebar, or unarchive it from the chat's own row menu or settings panel. Nothing brings it back on its own: new messages do not resurface it and it stays out of the Unread filter, so archive suits a conversation you are done with, not one that is only quiet. Silence a noisy chat with Mute.

Leave takes you out of a chat for good, and losing the chat is the price: the confirm says "You will lose this chat and its history." and names any connected apps that end with your access. Your name comes off the member list and the others carry on without you. A one to one chat is no different, because a one to one is just a two person chat; if you only want their messages to stop, block or silence them from their profile instead.

There is no separate delete. A chat lives as long as it has members, and the last member leaving ends it for good, transcript and every copy included. See Who can see what.

Picking up where you left off

Opening a chat that has unread messages takes you to the first thing you have not read, not to the bottom. A "New" line marks where you left off and the chat opens just under it, so you can read forward in order. Everything below the line is what arrived while you were away.

You keep your place. Only the messages you actually scrolled past count as read, so leaving a busy chat after reading twenty of fifty messages leaves the other thirty unread. The count on the chat in the sidebar catches up when you leave it rather than ticking down as you scroll. Come back later and the "New" line is still there, sitting where you stopped rather than at the top of the pile.

Because you land part of the way up, the chat is not following new messages while you read. A button sits at the bottom of the chat for it: "Back to latest" when nothing new has arrived, and "Jump to latest" with a count when something has. Press it to drop to the newest message and start following again. It is the way back while you are anchored up in history; once you are on the newest messages again, scrolling to the bottom keeps you following as usual. A chat with nothing unread opens at the bottom as usual, and so does one you reach from a notification or a link to a specific message, which takes you to that message instead.

A chat you have been away from for a long time opens at the newest message instead. Once a chat has 99 or more unread messages (its count shows "99+"), landing on the first of them would put you days or weeks back, so you start at the bottom, and an "unread" button at the top of the chat takes you up to where you left off if you do want to read it all in order.