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A workspace is a folder on your computer. Point Palette Desktop at it and that folder is your workspace.
There's no separate database, no cloud workspace, no Palette account that owns your files. The folder on your machine is the source of truth.
That means:
When you start a session, the agent has access to everything in the workspace folder:
The agent can read across the whole workspace. That's how it knows what your project is, what's in flight, and what's been decided.
The agent can create files, edit existing files, and reorganize folders inside the workspace.
It doesn't write directly to your folder. Every change goes through a session first, where you review before anything saves back.
You can have several workspaces open in Palette Desktop at the same time. Each one is its own folder, with its own sessions, chats, and agent context.
Switch between them in the sidebar. Useful when you keep different kinds of work in different folders, like a team workspace and a personal one, or one workspace per area.
Folders are how teams already organize knowledge. They travel well, they're portable across tools, they don't depend on one vendor's database.
Folders are also the right unit of context for an agent. A well-structured folder gives the agent everything it needs to do good work, without you pasting background into every chat.
Most teams haven't worked this way before. Plain markdown files, structured for both humans and AI to read, is new behavior.
Three ways to start a workspace: