Workspace and files

The Workspace is one folder on this machine, ~/.exe/workspace, that you, your coding agents and your apps all read and write. It is where a file changes hands: what one of you puts there, the others find. Its icon on the desktop opens it in a Finder window.

What the Workspace is for

For you:

• Bring a file to this machine. Drag it from your computer onto the desktop, and it is in the Workspace.
• Hand a file to an agent. Drop a screenshot, a log or a document on a Claude Code or Codex window. It lands in the Workspace, and its path is typed into the window for the agent to read.
• Look at what an agent made. A text file, a picture, a web page, a movie or a sound opens in a window of its own on the desktop.
• Take a file away. Download saves a Workspace file to the computer your browser runs on.
• Keep the same files on every desk. Joined desks sync their Workspace files; see Joining desks together.

For a coding agent, such as Claude Code or Codex:

• A plain folder. An agent that works on this machine reads and writes ~/.exe/workspace as it does any folder. What it leaves there, you open from the Workspace window.
• Where its sessions begin. The desktop starts Claude Code and Codex in this folder. The one exception is a machine that holds exe's own source at /www/exe: there they start in that folder.
• The files you give it. A file dropped on its window arrives here, and the path typed into the window is the file's path on this machine.
• Somewhere to show its work. A web page, a picture or a movie it saves here opens on your desktop with a double-click.

Apps use the folder too: Writer edits any Markdown file in it, and Easel saves its pictures there. See Apps.

Open the Workspace

Double-click the Workspace icon on the desktop; on a phone, tap it. The window shows the folder's contents as icons. The line under the title bar says how many items there are and how much disk space is free.

A file's icon tells its kind: a picture, a movie, a web page, plain text, an archive, a CD image, a checksum. Any other file is a blank page.

Each folder opens in a window of its own, as in the classic Finder. Names that begin with a dot are not shown.

A line of your desktop menu can open the Workspace or one of its folders; see Desktop context menu.

See a folder as icons or as a list

A folder of many files reads better as a list: an item to a line, with the date it was modified, its size and its kind. Right-click a window's empty space and choose View → as List. View → as Icons goes back, and the check mark is on the view you are in.

• Click the triangle before a folder to list what is in it under it, a step in; click it again to put that away. A folder inside can be opened the same way. With a folder selected, the Right and Left arrow keys do the same.
• Click Date Modified, Size or Kind at the top of the list to sort by it: newest first, largest first, kinds from A. Name sorts by name again.
• In a list an item is its icon and its name: click, double-click and right-click those. The rest of its line is the window's, so a right-click there gives the window's menu.
• Each folder remembers its own view, its sort and which folders were left open, on every desktop of this exe and on every node it is synced with.

What a double-click opens

The text editor edits the file in place and saves as you type.

A web page runs sandboxed, apart from the desktop: its scripts run, and it cannot reach the desktop's API or its token. The right-click menu's Open in New Window shows it in a browser window instead, and Edit Source opens its text in the editor.

In the player you can play, scrub, step a frame at a time, and click the speaker to mute. The movie streams from the daemon, so a long clip starts at once and scrubbing seeks instead of downloading.

Select with the keyboard

Type a name's first letters to select it, as in the classic Finder: a jumps to the first name starting with "a", and letters typed quickly spell more of it (ar reaches a folder named Artifacts).

The arrow keys move the selection an icon left or right, or a row up or down. In a list they move it a line up or down, and Right and Left open and shut a folder. The same keys work in My Apps and the Icon Editor gallery.

Right-click a file or a folder

An item moved to the Trash is not deleted. It sits in ~/.exe/workspace/.Trash, under its name with a number in front, and the desktop's Trash window does not list it. To restore it, move it out of that folder.

Right-click a window's empty space for New Folder…, New Text File…, Upload… and View. A new name cannot begin with a dot or hold a slash.

Bring files in, take files out

Drag files from your computer onto any of these:

• The desktop: they land in the Workspace root.
• A Workspace window: they land in that window's folder.
• A folder icon in a Workspace window: they land in that folder.
• A Claude Code, Codex or Terminal window: they land in the root, and each path is typed into the window. See Claude Code, Codex and Terminal.

Two menu items bring files in from this browser as well. File → Upload to Workspace… puts one file in the root, and Upload…, in the menu of a window's empty space, puts files in that window's folder.

A file can be 100 MB at most, and a file with the name of one already there replaces it. Folders cannot be dragged in; drag their files.

New files brought in this way are announced on the Newsfeed, so every desk in the mesh sees them arrive; overwriting an existing file stays quiet.

To take a file out, right-click it and choose Download.

Files an agent writes

A Workspace window lists its folder when it opens, and again when a file changes through the desktop, an app or a joined desk. A file an agent wrote straight into the folder shows the next time the folder is opened: double-click the folder's icon again.

Web pages are worth a folder of their own. The Artifacts folder is where agents publish the pages they make: a copy of each claude.ai artifact Claude publishes, for one. exe does not make that folder or fill it by itself, so tell your agent to keep its pages there.

Between joined desks a file travels if it is 100 MB or less. A desk on an older release takes only files up to 10 MB; a bigger one reaches it once that desk is updated. A file over 100 MB that an agent put in the folder stays on this machine, and so does everything whose name begins with a dot, the Trash included. An empty folder does not travel until it holds a file.

The Workspace over HTTP

The desktop and the apps reach the Workspace through the daemon's API. A script, or an agent on another machine, can use the same calls. The Agent Skill Guide tells an agent to leave them alone unless you ask: an agent on this machine works in the folder itself.

Paths are relative to the Workspace, and one that leaves it is refused. When api_token is set, each call needs the Authorization: Bearer <token> header; see Configuration.

Mount the Workspace on your own computer

The Workspace mounts on your own computer as a drive named Workspace: what you drop into it is on the desk at once, and what the desk or an agent saves there is on your computer. Help → Mount Workspace… shows the address, the name and the password with Copy beside each, and the steps for macOS, Windows and Linux. Connect from picks the address: the desk's own https address when you reached the desk that way, or this machine's address on the network.

On a Mac, choose Go → Connect to Server… in the Finder, enter the address, click Connect and sign in as workspace with the password. On Windows, choose Map network drive under This PC in File Explorer, enter the address as the folder, tick Connect using different credentials and sign in the same way. Windows takes a password over plain http only after a change in its registry; the window shows that line ready to copy, with the one that lets files over 50 MB through. An https address needs the first of them not. On Linux, GNOME Files takes the address as dav:// under Other Locations → Connect to Server, Dolphin as webdav://, and a shell mounts it with davfs2; the window spells each out for the address chosen.

The drive is the same volume a Mac exe runs mounts, the Workspace folder over WebDAV at /Workspace/ on exe's port, behind the volume's own password.