Sessions
A session is a conversation room inside a project. Your teammates, Dev (DevSpec's assistant) and your agents can all be in the same room, so the discussion, the decision and the handoff to an agent happen in one place, and everyone sees the same thing. When the room settles something, it becomes a task, a memory or a document that outlives the conversation.
You'll find every session for a project under Plan → Sessions in the project sidebar.
Start a session
Start a session from Sessions → New session, or from New session on the project's Overview. On a phone, use the floating Start a new session button at the bottom of the screen to start one by voice (Talk) or text (Type).
DevSpec asks who you want to start with:
- Dev: start talking to Dev straight away.
- Start a session: start the conversation and bring others in as you go.
- One of your agents: start with an agent that's already running, or start a new one on this computer.
The session gets a title automatically after the first real message. Anyone who can open the session can rename it from the session settings.
Every project member, including a Viewer, can start a session. Opening a room for your team or a connected agent is free. Starting with Dev also needs Dev enabled for you, funds in the organization and room within your personal and project spending limits. An organization that has become read-only cannot create new sessions.
Choose who hears your message
The Send to picker beside the send button decides where your next message goes:
- Dev: Dev reads it and replies.
- Post to room: add your message to the conversation.
- An agent in the room: that agent receives it as an instruction.
- Add agent…: bring an agent into the room first.
A new session starts on Post to room, unless you started it with Dev. To ask Dev a question, pick Dev or @mention Dev. DevSpec remembers your choice for each session, on every device.
Each message shows a quiet label saying who it went to ("to Dev", "to Room", or the agent's name), so everyone can follow who was asked what.
Mention people, Dev and agents
Type @ in the message box to mention someone. The list shows the people in this session first, then other project members, then the agents in the room, then Dev.
- @Dev asks Dev to reply, even if you're posting to the room.
- @a person notifies them and sends the message to the room. If they couldn't see the session before, mentioning them gives them access.
- @an agent sends the message to that agent, if you're allowed to instruct it.
When you reply to a teammate's message, they're notified too. Mentions and replies arrive in the notification bell and on the Notifications page, and you can choose to get them by email in Settings → Notifications. Mentions also work in comments on tasks.
Who can see a session
Choose the audience before you create a session, or change it later in the session settings under Visibility:
| Setting | Who can open it and post |
|---|---|
| Private ("Only you") | Only you. Hidden even from project Maintainers and organization admins. |
| Shared ("Project team") | Everyone on the project, including Viewers. This is the default. |
| Restricted ("Specific people") | You plus the people on the access list. |
Only the person who started the session, or a project Maintainer, can change its visibility or its access list. For a Restricted session, manage the list from the People tab with Manage who can join….
There's no join button: opening a Shared session is joining it, and you appear on the room's roster once you post.
Working with agents in a session
Bring an agent into a session with Send to → Add agent…, or from the session's Agents tab. You can choose an agent that's already running, move one over from another session, or start a new one on this computer.
Once it's in the room, pick it in Send to and ask it to do something: investigate a bug, work named tasks, or review a change. Its replies are labeled with the agent's name and its owner. Detach removes it from the room but leaves it running; End shuts it down (owner only).
Who may give instructions to an agent is set by its owner. New agents default to Only you, and their owner can open them to Anyone on the project or Chosen people so teammates can talk to an idle agent and bring it into sessions its owner can read. See Working with your agents.
Ask privately opens a side conversation with Dev or with your own agent that stays out of the shared room.
Polls, plans, questions and Still to Discuss
Sessions have four shared tools that keep a group conversation moving. Dev and agents create the first three when the conversation needs them.
- Polls ask the room to choose between options. Dev marks the option it recommends, but that isn't a vote. The poll resolves when everyone has answered, or when its creator, the session's creator or a Maintainer ends it.
- Plans show the steps Dev or an agent is working through, with each step's progress. Anyone can hide a plan for themselves.
- Questions are directed at one person, when Dev or an agent needs a decision from you before it carries on. Unanswered questions also appear on the project Overview under Needs attention.
- Still to Discuss lists the questions the room raised but hasn't settled. DevSpec keeps the list up to date as you talk. You can add points yourself, mark them Discussed and reopen them. Open points from every session also appear on the project Overview.
Discuss a decision that needs an OK
Choose Talk it through from a Review question to open a session with the question and the relevant records. Continue the discussion takes you back to that room later.
If a check finds a conflict while you work, a From DevSpec card shows the question and links to the affected records. Use Show all to read a longer record.
You can ask Dev or an agent to record your answer when the decision is yours to make. If someone else needs to agree, they receive a request to confirm it themselves. Starting a discussion does not approve the change. See Review.
Attach files
Use the paperclip, or paste an image, to attach files to a message. You can attach up to 10 files and 12 MB per message:
| File type | Largest file |
|---|---|
| Text (.txt, .md, .csv) | 2 MB |
| Word (.docx) | 10 MB |
| 12 MB | |
| Images (PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP) | 10 MB |
Dev can read attached images and PDFs, and the text of Word documents. By default an attachment belongs to the session and appears under Session files in the side panel. Tick Save to project to also add it to the project's documents, where Dev and your agents can find it from any session.
You can also choose an audio recording with the paperclip. Its transcript is added to your draft for you to check before sending, rather than attached as a file. Audio recordings have their own limits: 15 minutes and 50 MB. See Voice.
Catch up on what you missed
Type /catchup in the message box to see what happened in the session while you were away, or /summary for a recap of the whole conversation. Only you see the result. DevSpec runs a catch-up for you automatically the first time you open a session that already has history, and when a lot has happened since you last looked.
On the Sessions page, an unread dot marks sessions with new messages.
Find a past session
The Sessions page lists every session you can see in the project. Search matches titles and what was said, and highlights the matching words. You can also:
- sort by recent activity, newest, oldest, most messages or unread
- filter to sessions you started, sessions you're involved in, or sessions with your agents
- filter by color flag, by recent activity, or to archived sessions only
- pin a session to the top, or give it one of five color flags (Rose, Amber, Green, Blue, Violet) for your own sorting
Dev can search past sessions for you too. Ask it where something was discussed.
Organize, split and download a session
From a message's menu you can copy, reply, react, ask Dev about it, or delete it. You can delete your own messages; the session's creator and project Maintainers can delete anyone's.
To take part of a conversation somewhere else, choose Select messages, pick the messages, and start another session with them. Copy keeps the originals where they are; Move takes them out. You can move your own messages; moving another person's messages needs a Maintainer.
From the session settings:
- Download transcript saves the conversation as plain text.
- Archive hides the session from everyone's active list. Posting to an archived session brings it back.
- Delete session removes it for good. A session that produced tasks, memories or documents can't be deleted, so archive it instead.
Archiving and deleting are open to the session's creator and project Maintainers.
What a session records
A session keeps its whole transcript, and anyone who can open it can read it back later.
What the room decides becomes lasting only when someone records it, during the conversation. Dev proposes tasks, memories and documents and writes them when you agree, or straight away if you ask. Agents in the room can record them too. Everything a session produced appears in the side panel's Work tab, linked back to the conversation it came from.
DevSpec doesn't extract anything after a session ends. Sessions don't end: you can come back to any session and carry on.
What sessions cost
Posting to the room is free. Dev's replies, reading aloud, voice input, Dev's web searches, /catchup, /summary and Ask privately are charged to your organization's balance, and count toward the personal allowance your admins can set for each person in Settings → Usage & limits. Keeping the Still to Discuss list up to date is background work, charged to the balance. If you stop Dev mid-reply, that reply isn't charged. See Billing, usage and limits.