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These concepts appear throughout Collivo and the docs.

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The hierarchy

How work is organized, from the top down. Each level sits inside the one above it.

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Organization

An organization is the top-level area for a company, team, or client environment. Collivo creates a default organization when you sign up. Members, projects, and shared work belong to an organization. You may hear people use “workspace” informally to describe the place where collaboration happens, such as a project or shared working area. In these docs, organization, space, and project are the terms to rely on.

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Space

A space groups related projects for an ongoing area of work — for example Client work, Marketing, or Research. That might be a department in a larger company, or simply how one person keeps different kinds of work apart. Every project belongs to one space, which you choose when you create the project. Space membership is separate from project permissions. A person in a space is a Space Member, Space Editor, or Space Manager, and that role governs what they can do in the space. Most people are Space Members: they can see the space and create projects in it. Space Managers can manage the space and open the projects in their space. Joining a space does not by itself open the projects inside it — each project is still shared separately.

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Project

A project keeps related files, folders, conversations, and collaborative work together. It is where a team works alongside AI on a specific piece of work — an initiative, a client engagement, or a large deliverable. Use separate projects to keep different clients, engagements, or workstreams cleanly apart. Every project lives in a space.

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Folder

A folder organizes files and artifacts inside a project, and helps both people and AI find related context. Teams naturally use folders to group work by task or by function, keeping everything for one part of the work in one place. For example, in a client engagement you might keep Discovery, Stakeholder interviews, Analysis, and Final report folders, so all the material for each stage stays together. For work that spans multiple chats, keep its files, guidance, and progress notes in one folder. You can mark that folder as a task folder to make it easier to recognize in the Files pane. A regular folder can serve the same purpose. See Task folders.

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File or artifact

A file or artifact is a piece of work inside Collivo. It might be an uploaded file, a document, a generated asset, or another collaborative item.

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Collaboration and permissions

How work is shared, and who can see it.

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Private and shared areas

Every project has two working areas, held as folders. Your folder is visible only to you unless you choose to share something from it. The project’s folder is visible to everyone with access to the project. Use your Private folder for work in progress — early drafts, rough notes, and files you are still shaping and don’t want others to rely on yet. Move a file into the Shared folder when it is ready for the team. Once it is there, it becomes shared context that everyone — and their AI chats — can build on. For example, an analyst drafts a findings summary in their Private folder while it is still taking shape. When it is solid, they move it to Shared. A colleague writing the final report can now point their AI at that summary as trusted context, so one person’s finished work becomes the starting point for the next. Items appear under when someone shares their private content with you directly.

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Shortcut

A shortcut is a reference to an existing item — it lets you surface the same work in another place without creating a separate copy. A shortcut uses the same icon as the original file, with a small shortcut badge added in the corner (). Clicking a shortcut opens the original document, so there is only ever one real copy to keep up to date.

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Working with AI

How the AI sees your project, and how you steer it.

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AI chat and agents

AI chat is how you work with Collivo’s AI. When you chat, you are talking to an agent — an AI teammate that uses the context in your project to answer questions and help you get work done. The quality of its help depends on the context it can use and the clarity of your request. An agent can reason through a task, work across the files in your context, and take actions on your behalf. Some of those actions require your review before they run (see Tool approval), so you can review sensitive changes before they happen.

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Tool approval

Some AI actions require your review before they run. Approval prompts let you check and confirm changes, generated files, or anything that affects project content before it happens.

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Annotation

An annotation is a standing instruction attached to a file or folder. It is visible to the AI and to everyone with access to that item, and appears as a sticky-note icon next to the resource. Use annotations to give collaborators and AI extra context or instructions about how that content should be used. Annotations are especially useful with agents. When an agent works on a task inside a folder, Collivo uses instructions annotated on that folder as task-specific guidance, so you do not have to repeat them in every prompt. For example, annotating a Client report folder with “Use UK English, and keep all figures in GBP” means every draft an agent produces in that folder follows those rules by default.

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Working folder

At any moment, you — and the AI you are chatting with — are working inside one folder in the project. This is the current working folder, marked with a location-pin icon in the file pane. Collivo uses instructions annotated on the working folder as guidance for that chat. Together, working folders, annotations, and shortcuts let you carve a project into focused areas — each dedicated to a specific task, with its own AI guidance and its own view of what the AI can and cannot see. You set the working folder for a task, annotate it with the guidance the AI should follow, and use shortcuts to bring in only the files that task needs. Think of it as a focused view for the AI. By default, the AI works from the content inside your current working folder. Hiding a file or folder from the AI removes it from view even within that folder — useful for keeping work-in-progress or non-authoritative material from misleading the AI’s analysis. Adding files to context then draws the AI’s attention to specific items in that view. You can also deliberately reference supported items outside the working folder, or inside a hidden item, when the AI needs that specific context.