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From download to your first session is a few clicks. Watch the video

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1. Download Palette Desktop

Palette Desktop is a local Mac app. It runs on your machine, not in a browser. Download it from palette.team. On Windows? We’re working on it. Join the Windows waitlist and we’ll let you know as soon as it’s ready.

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2. Set up Palette

Requires Palette Desktop v0.52.0 or later.
When a window has no workspace, or you’re signed out, Palette Desktop shows a full-window onboarding with three screens:
  1. Sign in. Select Get started and finish signing in in your browser.
  2. Enable your AI tools. Turn on the agents you want to use. Any enabled agent lets you continue, including Palette’s own agent, which is always on.
  3. Set up your workspace. Choose where your workspace lives.
Palette only shows the screens you still need. If you sign out, the onboarding covers your window, and signing back in returns you to the workspace as you left it. To create another workspace later, choose New Workspace from the app menu to open the onboarding again.

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Set up your workspace

The last screen has two choices:
  • Pick a location. Choose where Palette creates a new workspace. Put it in your Google Drive or Dropbox folder on your computer, and your colleagues can work in it with you. If the folder you pick is empty, it becomes the workspace. If it already has files, Palette creates a Palette workspace folder inside it.
  • Open a workspace you already have. Point Palette at any folder you’ve already got. Local, or synced through Google Drive, Dropbox, or iCloud.
Palette fills every new workspace from the Company OS starter template. If Palette can’t fetch the template, the workspace opens empty. Opening a large cloud folder, such as a Google Drive shared drive, can take a while the first time. Palette shows a spinner on the button you selected and a count of the files it has processed so far. If you point at a folder your team already syncs, the whole team is in. No invite flow, no separate workspace to set up.

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3. Run your first session

Once your workspace opens, you can start your first session. A session is a sandboxed clone of your folder. The agent works inside the clone, so nothing touches your real folder until you decide. Inside a session, you run chats. Pick your agent per chat, from Palette’s own agent, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, or Mistral Vibe. Different chats in the same session can use different agents, and you can run multiple sessions in parallel. If an agent isn’t installed yet, Palette installs it for you in one click on the Enable your AI tools screen. Palette’s own agent is built in and needs nothing. For the others, bring your own subscription or API key, or use Palette’s own agent, which needs no third-party subscription. See Agents.

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4. Review and save back

When you’re done, review every change the agent made. Then save the session back to the shared folder. Nothing writes to the shared folder until you approve it. That’s what makes it safe for the whole team to work in the same folder.

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Get started from Home

Requires Palette Desktop v0.54.0 or later.
Home is the page that shows you what to do next in a workspace. Select Home above Files in the sidebar to open it. A workspace window opens on Home. If you closed the window while in a session, Palette reopens that session instead. Palette remembers this per workspace folder. Until you dismiss Getting started, the Home row in the sidebar shows your progress, such as 2 of 4. The badge stays visible when you’re away from Home, so you can see that steps are left. Home has a greeting with a composer at the top. Type what you want to work on and send it. Palette starts a new session with your request. Below the composer, Home has four sections:
  • Getting started. A checklist of four steps. Select a step to expand it, then select its button to run it:
    • Start your first session starts a session where the agent explains the workspace and helps you set up your profile.
    • Get set up in the workspace starts a session where the agent walks you through what’s left to set up.
    • Import files and agent memory scrolls to Import context and highlights it.
    • Manage agents and connectors scrolls to Your AI agents and highlights it.
    A step counts as done once you select its button. Palette tracks the first three steps per workspace and the last one per install. When every step is done, select Dismiss to hide the checklist.
  • Try it out. Six starting points: Profile card, Weekly recap, Week plan, Folder brief, Meeting note, and Customer update. Select one to start a session with its request already written. This also completes Start your first session.
  • Import context. Three ways to bring what you already have into a new session:
    • Drop files on Drop files here, or choose files or a folder.
    • Select From your AI agents. Copy the prompt into ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, paste the reply, and select Import context.
    • Select From your connectors to have the agent pull in pages and docs from tools like Google Drive, Notion, or Slack.
    Palette attaches your files or pasted reply to the session’s first message. It doesn’t copy them into the workspace. Palette also attaches filing rules, so the agent knows how to file what you import. Each import needs a new session, so at the session limit Palette shows a notice and starts nothing. Delete a session you’ve finished with, then try again.
  • Your AI agents. One card per agent with its status. Select Enable, Install, or Sign in to get an agent ready. A ready agent lists its connectors by their plain names. Select Add connectors to connect more tools to it. Select the settings icon to open that agent’s page in Settings.

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Next

  • Agents, the five agents you can run and how model access works
  • Sessions, the sandboxed unit of work
  • Chats, running one or several at once with different agents
  • Workspaces, how Palette works with folders on your computer
  • Sharing workspaces, how teams work in the same folder
  • Marketplace, install a folder system or workflow
  • FAQ