What Squad is and how it works

Squad gives you a team of AI teammates that you run from a web dashboard. You tell your teammates what you want in plain words. They do the work on their own computer, with your AI subscription and the apps that you connect. When a decision needs you, they stop and ask. This page explains the parts of Squad and how they fit together. To set up your squad, follow Get started. Squad for Mac is a native app for the same squad. The dashboard uses the same names and layout as the Mac app, and the pages here note where the Mac differs. See Get started with Squad for Mac. Squad for iPhone and iPad is an app for the same squad, made for answering, asking, and checking in when you are away from your desk. It is in beta and installs through Apple’s TestFlight app. See Get started with Squad for iPhone and iPad.

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Who is in a squad

Your workspace is one squad and everything in it: your teammates, their work, your settings, and your connections. The dashboard calls it your squad. One account can own more than one squad, and can be a person in other people’s squads. You, the owner. You sign in to the dashboard, give work, answer questions, and control billing and settings. Your teammates know you by Your name in Settings > Squad > General. People in your squad. You can invite other people into your squad. Each person signs in with their own email address and has a role: Administrator, Collaborator, or Viewer. People see your squad’s work and, except Viewers, talk to your teammates. Your teammates know who wrote each message and answer that person by name. Billing always stays with you. Each person uses a paid seat. See Invite people to your squad. The chief of staff. Every squad starts with one teammate that leads it, the chief of staff. By default it is named Chief of Staff, with the handle @chief, and you can rename it. It runs your onboarding conversation, designs your squad with you, creates the other teammates, and coordinates work that crosses more than one area. When you are not sure who should do something, ask your chief of staff. Other teammates. During onboarding, the chief of staff proposes 4 or 5 teammates, each with a name, a role, and a personality. They are created after you approve them. Later, you add more teammates by asking the chief of staff. You can talk to any teammate directly. A teammate that gets your message owns that work. Each teammate has its own page, its own conversations with you, and its own files on your cloud computer. All teammates share the same knowledge about you and your company, and one memory. While its switches are on, the memory learns from your squad’s work and gives teammates what it holds about a request before they start. See Manage what your squad remembers.

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How work moves

A few words describe almost everything in Squad. Conversation. Every chat message that you start opens a conversation with one teammate. A quick question gets an answer in the conversation. Task. Bigger work becomes a task. A task has an owner, a priority, a description, comments, and a progress trail. Tasks live on Tasks, in four columns: Not started, Needs you, Working on it, and Done. You can create a task yourself, but usually you ask in chat and the teammate creates it. See Track work on Tasks. Question. A question blocks a task until you answer it. When a teammate needs a decision, an approval, access, an action, or information that only you have, it asks you a question. The task moves to Needs you. When you answer every question on it, the task continues. Questions wait in Needs you, and the first ones also show on Today. See Answer what needs you. Routine. Work that repeats on a schedule is a routine. A trigger starts work when something happens, for example when another app sends an event. Both are on Routines. See Schedule recurring work with routines. Run. A run is one execution by one teammate: a chat reply, a routine, a trigger event, an email it handles, or a tool call. Each run is recorded with what started it, its duration, and how it ended. See See what your squad did. Doc. A doc is written output from a teammate: a report, a brief, a draft, a reference page. Teammates keep docs up to date, and you can read and edit them in Docs. See Find and manage your squad’s docs. Project. A project keeps the conversations about one client or job together, with any of your teammates. Every teammate in a project reads its notes first. Projects are in the sidebar. The everyday loop is: you ask, a teammate works, a question comes back only if it needs you, you answer, the work is done, and the squad remembers what it learned.

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What runs where

Squad has three parts. It helps to know which part does what. The dashboard. The dashboard is the web app that you open in your browser. It keeps your tasks, questions, docs, chat history, activity, and settings. It is also where you connect apps and AI accounts. Your cloud computer. Each squad has its own computer in the cloud. Your teammates run there. It holds each teammate’s working files, notes, and skills, and the credentials that you connect for your AI accounts and custom integrations. Teammates use a browser on this computer to open web pages, and you can watch a teammate’s screen or take over. See Watch or take over a teammate’s computer. Your AI provider. The thinking happens in the AI models of the provider that you connect, such as Claude Code or ChatGPT. Your teammates call the models from your cloud computer with your account. See Connect your AI subscription.

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Your own AI subscription

Squad does not include AI model usage. You bring your own subscription or API key from one of 13 providers, and your provider bills you for it. You can connect more than one account and more than one provider, and set the order in which they are used when one fails or reaches a limit. See Choose models and manage AI accounts. Squad charges for a few optional things beyond the plan. Built-in research and scrape tools use credits. Teammate email inboxes and seats for people are paid add-ons. Each extra squad is a separate subscription. The app shows each price before you confirm. For details, see What Squad costs and what uses credits.

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When teammates work

Teammates do not work all the time. A teammate starts a run when something wakes it:

• You send it a message, or mention it with @.
• A task is assigned to it.
• A routine that you switched on reaches its time.
• An email arrives in its inbox, if it has one.
• A trigger that you turned on receives an event, for example a webhook from another app. See Start work when something happens (triggers).

Each teammate has a heartbeat: a routine that wakes the teammate to check its work. Heartbeats start switched off. Nothing runs on a timer until you turn a heartbeat on or create a routine. See Schedule recurring work with routines.

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A tour of the dashboard

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Sidebar

On a wide window, the dashboard has no bar at the top. Everything starts in the sidebar. From top to bottom:

• Your squad’s name. Select it to open Switch squad. It lists every squad that you own or were invited to, with Standard for a squad that you own, Shared with you for a squad that another person shared with you, and Setting up while a squad is being built. The open squad has a check mark. Select another squad to move to it. New squad team starts another squad. See Run more than one squad. You change the name in Settings > Squad > General > Squad name.
• The bell, beside the name. It lists your notifications. See Choose your notifications.
• Today: what needs you, what your squad did today, and today’s routines. The count on it is everything that waits in Needs you. The browser tab’s title shows the same number. See Use Today.
• The places that you pinned, in your order. At first these are Email (your teammates’ inboxes, with a count of unread email), Docs (everything your teammates wrote, with a count of new and changed docs), and Contacts. See Pin a place to the sidebar.
• More: every other place, one click away. Select More to fold or open it. It starts folded and stays the way you left it in this browser. While it is folded, a dot on it means that something inside needs you, is unread, or is new to the sidebar.
• Your squad: every teammate, with a line that shows what it is doing. A small dot circles a teammate’s face while it works. When it needs you, an orange mark sits on its face and the line under its name says Needs you. A blue dot at the end of the row means a reply that you have not read. Select a teammate to open its chat. The + beside the heading opens a chat with your chief of staff to hire a teammate. Only the owner and Administrators who work with every teammate see it.
• Projects: the projects worked in most recently, then All projects for the rest and Archived. The + makes a new project.
• Group chats: Squad chat, a room with all your teammates, and any group chats. Squad chat appears when you have two or more teammates. Conversations between two teammates fold under Between teammates.
• Pinned: items that you pinned, one line each. A pinned conversation shows its teammate’s face. This section appears after your first pin. Pins are saved to your account, so they show on every device where you sign in.

At the bottom of the sidebar, Help (the question mark) opens a menu with Help and support, What’s new, and Ideas for your squad, and Settings opens Settings. A blue dot on Help means that What’s new has updates that you have not read. The menu then says how many, for example What’s new (3 new). See Get help. Collapse sidebar shrinks the sidebar to a narrow column of icons, with the bell, your places, More, your teammates’ faces, Help, and Settings. A blue dot on a place’s icon there can also mean that the place is new. Expand sidebar opens it again. To change the sidebar’s width, drag its right edge. In a browser on a Mac, a row just above Help and Settings names Squad for Mac: Get Squad for Mac, or Open in Squad for Mac when you use the app. On the narrow column of icons, it is a laptop icon after Settings, with the same name. See Squad for Mac on the web. Your account is in Settings: select your name at the top of the Settings list to open You, with your email address and Sign out. A person in your squad sees only the rows that their role allows.

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Places in the sidebar

Besides Today, the sidebar has these places. Each one is either pinned under Today or listed under More, never both. More lists them in this order: A person sees only the places that their role can open. For example, What your squad knows shows only for you and Administrators. The open place’s row is marked. A page inside a place marks that place: a task marks Tasks, a trigger marks Routines, and History marks Activity. Needs you and Health mark Today. When More is folded and the open page is one of its places, More is marked.

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Pin a place to the sidebar

1. Point to the place’s row in the sidebar, under More or under Today.
2. Select the pin at the end of the row: Pin to sidebar, or Unpin from sidebar for a pinned place. You can also right-click the row, or press Shift+F10 while the row has the keyboard focus, and choose the same action. Or press P while the row has the keyboard focus.

A new pin goes to the end of your pinned places. To change their order, drag a pinned place, or press Option (Alt on Windows) and the Up or Down arrow while its row has the keyboard focus. The row moves after Squad saves the change. A pinned place shows the pin filled in. A place under More shows it as an outline. A place that is new to the sidebar says New in blue for its first month, until you open it or pin it. Contacts and Wallet joined the sidebar on October 14, 2026. The mark is yours, in this browser, in all your squads. While More is folded over a new place, More shows a blue dot. For when the mark ends, see Limits and defaults. While Docs has a count, its row’s menu also has Mark all docs as read, which clears the count without opening each doc. You can also press U while the Docs row has the keyboard focus. See Read state. Your pinned places are your own. Each person in your squad has their own, in each squad, and they follow you to every device where you sign in to that squad. Until you change them, Email, Docs, and Contacts are pinned. Pinned places are not the same as the Pinned section, which keeps single tasks, docs, emails, reminders, and conversations. See Pins. On Squad for Mac, the sidebar has the same Today, pinned places, More, New marks, and keys, and your pinned places are the same as on the web. These are the differences:

• More and the New marks are kept on this Mac, not in your browser.
• The right-click menu says Pin to Sidebar or Unpin from Sidebar, and on Docs, Mark All Docs as Read. When a pin or a move does not save, the sidebar says “Couldn’t update your sidebar. Try again in a moment.”
• ⌘1 to ⌘4 open Today, Email, Docs, and Contacts, wherever they are in the sidebar. The Go menu lists every place. See Keyboard shortcuts.
• An update card shows when an update of the app is available or ready. See Settings, notifications, and updates on the Mac.
• The footer says “Reconnecting…” when the connection to Squad drops. Its gear opens Settings (⌘,).
• The sidebar has no Delegate button. To hand over work, press ⌥Space in any app. See Delegate, talk, and use Siri.

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Pages that open from where they belong

Some pages are not in the sidebar. They open from the place where they belong, keep their own link, and the browser’s Back returns you. You can also open any of them by name with ⌘K or Ctrl+K. See Search and keyboard shortcuts.

• Needs you: every question that waits for you. Open it from the link under Needs you on Today (See all and a number, shown when more wait than Today lists), from Open Needs you on a teammate’s About when it waits on you, or with ⌘K.
• History: every run, by day. Open it from Every run, by day at the end of Activity, from See what happened on a problem under Needs you or on a routine that failed, or press R.
• Health: today’s run problems. A teammate’s About links to it when its runs failed today. Health opens only for you and Administrators.
• Apps and AI: in Settings. A teammate’s setup is on the teammate’s page. See Settings reference.
• What’s new and What’s possible: open Help, then What’s new or Ideas for your squad.

The places in the sidebar also open from other pages. For example, See all tasks on a teammate’s About opens Tasks, and See all activity on Today opens Activity. For every way to reach each place, see Places and pages. On Squad for Mac, Needs you, History, and Cloud computer are the pages without a place in the sidebar. They are in the Go menu, and Cloud computer only for the owner and Administrators while your cloud computer is on. Health is not on the Mac. The notch and the menu bar panel open Needs you, and the menu bar panel also opens History. At the top of these pages, a back link names the place that you came from, or Today when there is none. A teammate’s page has no back link, so use Back (⌘[). See Keyboard shortcuts and Use the notch and the menu bar.

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A teammate’s page

A teammate’s page has two places at the top, Chat and About. Chat opens your conversation with the teammate. From the second conversation on, the list of conversations shows beside the open one. About says what the teammate is working on, what it did lately, who waits on it, and its tasks and routines. Setup at the end of About opens the teammate’s setup. See Chat with your teammates and Add, change, and pause teammates.

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On a phone or a narrow window

When the window is narrow, for example in a phone’s browser, a bar at the bottom opens Today, Squad, your first two pinned places, and More. At first, the two places are Email and Docs. More opens a page that lists every other place, each with a pin that you tap to pin or unpin it. A pinned place’s pin is filled in, and a new place says New. A dot on More means that something there needs you, is unread, or is new. Squad opens the full sidebar, with your places, teammates, projects, group chats, and pins. A row at the top has Menu, which opens the same sidebar, the Squad mark, which opens Today, Search or jump to…, the message icon, the bell, and the button with your initial, which opens the account menu. See Search and keyboard shortcuts.

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Squad for Mac on the web

When you open the dashboard in a browser on a Mac, the dashboard offers you the app, or sends you into it once you use it. Nothing shows on a public share of your dashboard, and nothing shows until Squad knows whether you use the app. You count as a person who uses the app when Squad for Mac reported to Squad, within a set time, that it opened on your account. The app reports this each time it opens, from version 1.0.76. For the time, see Limits and defaults. When you do not use the app yet, the dashboard offers it in these places: The offer says what the app does and which Macs it runs on: “For Macs with Apple silicon (M1 or newer) on macOS 14 or later.” Download for Mac downloads the app. Then the offer says “Open the file you downloaded and drag Squad into Applications. Then open Squad and sign in with the email and password you use here.” Done closes it, and on Today it also hides the card. If you already have the app, select Open Squad for Mac after “Already have it?”. The app opens on Today, in the squad where you clicked. When you use the app, the row in the sidebar says Open in Squad for Mac. It opens the screen that you are on in the app, in the same squad. A screen that the app does not have, such as Health, opens Today in the app. A dashboard link that you open from outside the dashboard, for example from an email or a chat, then opens in Squad for Mac. The browser tab shows “Opening this in Squad for Mac.” with Open again and Use the browser instead. Use the browser instead keeps dashboard links in this browser from then on. To undo this, turn on Open links in Squad for Mac in Settings > You in that browser. A link stays in the browser in these cases:

• You reload the page, or go to it with Back or Forward.
• You already clicked or typed on the page, for example to sign in. Or the page loaded more than a few seconds ago. See Limits and defaults.
• The browser tab already showed your dashboard, for example when you come back from an app’s sign-in or from a checkout.
• Squad for Mac opened the page in your browser itself, for example with Open on the Web.

For the app itself, see Get started with Squad for Mac.

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Squad for iPhone and iPad on the web

When you open the dashboard in the browser of an iPhone or an iPad and you do not use Squad for iPhone and iPad yet, the dashboard offers it to you. It names the app for your device, for example Get Squad for iPad on an iPad. Every link to the app opens its TestFlight page in a new tab. A browser on a Mac never shows this offer. In the dashboard, nothing shows on a public share, or until Squad knows whether you use the app. The sign-in page shows its line on every iPhone and iPad. The offer is for every person in the squad, whatever their role. When you use the app, the dashboard stops offering it: no card on Today and no row in the bell, on every iPhone and iPad. The app tells Squad that you use it each time it starts, and when you sign in, from version 1.0.92. If you do not open the app for a while, the dashboard offers it again. See How Squad knows you use the app. The sign-in page shows its line either way. Unlike Squad for Mac, the app never takes over dashboard links: they stay in the browser. Squad for Mac offers the iPhone app in its bell too. See Use the bell. For the app itself, see Get started with Squad for iPhone and iPad.

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What Squad does not do

• Squad does not include AI model usage. Your teammates cannot work until you connect an AI account.
• Teammates do not run on a timer by default. Heartbeats start switched off.
• The dashboard does not add or delete a teammate by itself. You ask your chief of staff to add or remove a teammate. The + beside Your squad only opens that chat. Teammates cannot remove the chief of staff or you, and a squad always has exactly one chief of staff.
• Teammates cannot erase all of your squad’s memory at once. Only you and the Administrators who can see every teammate can, with Forget all… in Memory. A teammate can still forget one memory.
• Teammates do not work on your own computer. They cannot reach your files or your browser unless you send the files or connect the app. The exception is Squad for Mac, where you approve each request on your Mac. See Let your teammates use your Mac.
• Credits do not pay for AI models. They pay only for the built-in research and scrape tools.

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