Create a project

Everything in Chorus lives inside a project: ideas, proposals, documents, and tasks all belong to one. This guide takes you from an empty dashboard to an open project workspace, ready for your first idea. It is the first stop in the AI-DLC workflow.

Open the Projects page

From the left sidebar, select Projects. The page lists your work grouped into collapsible project group cards, with anything ungrouped under an Ungrouped section. A view toggle in the top-right switches between List and Grid.

On a brand-new installation the page shows a Welcome to Chorus onboarding panel that walks you through the same two steps below: first a project group, then a project.

Create a project group

A project group holds related projects together — for example one group per product or team.

1. Select New Project Group in the top-right (or Create Project Group in the onboarding panel).
2. Enter a Group name (for example, Mobile Apps).
3. Choose a Visibility: Public (the default; everyone in the workspace can find the group) or Private (only its members, and people with access to one of its projects). See Control who can see a project.
4. Optionally add a Description.
5. Select Create Group.

The new group appears as a card with a View Dashboard link and its own New Project button.

Create a project

1. On the group card, select New Project. The dialog shows Creating in: group name so you know where it lands.
2. Enter a Project title (for example, Project Alpha).
3. Add a Description of what the project is about.
4. Choose a Visibility: Public or Private. A new project starts with its group’s visibility; inside a private group it must be private and inherits the group’s roles. You become the Admin of the project you create.
5. Optionally set a working directory now in the Agent working directories section (see below); you can also leave it and set it later.
6. Select Create Project.

Choose Public or Private when you create a project.

Chorus creates the project and adds it to the group. Selecting Create Project again, or pressing Enter, while the request is running does not create a second project.

If the result is not confirmed

If Chorus cannot confirm the result, for example because the request takes longer than 20 seconds or the connection drops, the dialog says so and keeps your draft. The project may still have been created. Close the dialog and check or refresh the project list before trying again: creating again requires I’ve checked the list and still want to create again, because it could produce a duplicate. If a request you dismissed turns out to have succeeded, the dialog tells you the next time you open it, and creating another project requires I want to create another project.

Set a fixed working directory

A working directory is the folder on a host machine that a connected agent reads and writes when it works on this project. It is set per agent, not as a single project-wide path.

In the project’s Agent working directories settings you can, for each agent:

• Configure working directory — pick a host and a directory.
• Replace working directory — point the agent at a different directory.
• Clear fixed working directory — remove the fixed path.

Once a directory is fixed, the project Overview header shows a lock chip with the path for that agent. A directory only becomes selectable when its host is online; you register those hosts and directories when you connect an agent runtime.

What fixing a directory does

Fixing a directory ties the project to one specific online agent and one working directory. This changes how Chorus behaves in three ways:

• The picker is skipped. Once a project has a fixed directory, any agent work you later start from it (creating an idea conversationally, running elaboration, dispatching a task) goes straight to that agent and directory. Chorus no longer asks you to pick a directory each time; the fixed choice is used silently.
• The choice becomes a durable target. The path you fix is recorded as a specific agent, host, and directory together, not just a folder path. That is the same kind of target described in the online-agents overview, and it is what a session is tied to.
• Work already under way is protected. If you later replace or clear the fixed directory, only future work follows the new setting. An idea or session that was already tied to the previous directory keeps running there — changing the project preference never drags in-flight work to a different folder.

So the fixed directory is both a default (new work lands there without asking) and a guarantee (work that already started stays where it started).

Project settings → Agent working directories: fix each agent to a host and directory for this project.

What the agent does

No agent acts yet at this stage, but the working directory you fix here is exactly where a connected agent will later read and write files as it executes tasks. Registering that host and directory is part of connecting a runtime — see the agent platforms reference to choose an agent, then Prepare agent access and Operate the Chorus daemon to bring one online.

Each project lives in a project group; create the group, then a project inside it.

Open the workspace

Select the project card to open its workspace at its Overview. The sidebar now shows the project’s navigation:

Section	What it holds
Overview	The idea tracker — where you capture and follow ideas — plus the project’s working-directory chips and settings.
Documents	Approved documents and completion reports.
Proposals	Proposals awaiting your review, plus approved ones.
Tasks	The Kanban board and dependency graph for the project’s tasks.
Graph	A mind-map of the project’s ideas, proposals, tasks, and documents.
Activity	The stream of everything that has happened in the project.

The project workspace opens at its Overview, where you capture and follow ideas.

Next

With the workspace open, continue to Capture an idea to start the pipeline.