Reference

Home

Home is the first screen you see when you log in — a greeting hero with a central chat input and two live sections that update as you work.

What you'll find on Home:

• Chat input – Ask questions, kick off tasks, or create boards directly from the home prompt.
• Jump back in – A cross-workspace feed of your most recent tasks. "All tasks" links to the workspace Tasks tab.
• Recently updated – Cross-workspace documents and boards that have changed recently.

Workspace navigation:

From any workspace, two tabs organize your work:

• Projects tab (/{workspace}/projects) – All your documents and boards, browseable by project. At the top of this tab, two sections appear when populated:

  • Pinned — items the workspace owner has pinned for the whole team. Useful for surfacing key boards or documents everyone on the workspace should see.
  • Subscribed — documents and boards you've individually subscribed to. These appear only for you.

  Below those sections, the full file browser lists everything else in the workspace.

• Tasks tab (/{workspace}/tasks) – A searchable, type-filterable list of every task you've started. Use this to find and reopen past tasks without scrolling through chat.

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Search

Search is your starting point in Surfboard. Type a question or keyword and Surfboard queries every connected system — email, Slack, Drive, GitHub, calendar, CRM — in a single pass. Results link directly to their source so you can verify and dig deeper.

Key features:

• Cross-source: One query searches across all connected tools at once — no tab-switching
• Personal and team-wide: Search your own data or content shared across your workspace
• Auto-connect: If Surfboard doesn't have access to a source you're asking about, it offers to connect it on the spot
• Citations: Every result links back to the original message, file, or event

Shortcuts:

• Arrow keys (up/down): Navigate prompt history
• Ctrl/Cmd+K R: Search prompt history
• Ctrl/Cmd+K C: Clear prompt history
• @mention: Reference boards in your questions
• File upload: Drag, drop, or paste images and files

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Tasks

A task is a one-off action you kick off by typing what you want. Unlike boards (which persist and refresh over time), tasks produce a result in the conversation and are done — a drafted email, a meeting brief, a metric pull, a status summary.

Key features:

• Instant: Describe what you need in plain language and Surfboard executes it
• Ephemeral: Results live in the conversation; they're not saved as boards unless you ask
• Action-oriented: Tasks do something (draft, summarize, pull, generate) rather than track something over time

Finding past tasks:

All tasks are also browseable from the workspace Tasks tab at /{workspace}/tasks. Use the search bar to find a task by title, or the type filter to narrow by kind (scheduled, update, etc.). Clicking a task row opens it full-screen; modifier-click opens it in a new tab.

When to use a task vs. a board:

• Task: You need it once, right now (a prep brief before a meeting, a drafted email)
• Board: You need it to stay current over time (account health, sprint progress, campaign reporting)

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Flows

Flows automate frequent multi-step tasks. A flow is a reusable named routine — Surfboard executes it on demand or on a schedule, and builds memory across runs. Examples:

• Writing an investment proposal — research the company, pull in your notes, and assemble them into a draft
• Drafting a spec — start from a one-page description, research supporting customer information, scan the codebase, generate screenshots or wireframes
• Researching a blog post — gather sources, propose topics, create an outline, review with you, and publish

Every flow has two parts:

1. Instructions – The operational prompt that tells Surfboard what to do each run. Editable at any time.
2. Memory – Working content that persists between runs. Surfboard reads it at the start of each run and updates it at the end — useful for tracking prior findings or context that builds over time.

Creating a flow

• Ask Surfboard: "Create a flow that summarizes my Slack DMs every morning" — it will walk you through the steps.
• Or turn an existing board or document into a flow. If a document already has the right instructions, ask Surfboard to "turn this document into a flow."

Finding your flows

Your flows appear on your home page. You can also ask Surfboard to list them at any time.

Running a flow

• Type ~ in the chat bar — it autocompletes to your list of flows.
• Or open a flow's page and click Run.
• Scheduled flows run automatically on their cadence.

Run history

Open any flow's page to see the full history of past runs.

When to use a flow vs. a task

• Task: You need it once, right now (a prep brief before a meeting, a drafted email).
• Flow: You need the same multi-step thing repeatedly, and want it to build on what it learned last time.

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Boards

A board is a living dashboard that Surfboard creates and maintains. Boards stay current as your connected sources change. They can be created independently of any project and moved freely between projects as your work evolves. Every board has three parts:

1. Content – The main view (status update, brief, dashboard, etc.)
2. Appendix – Supporting evidence, citations, and raw data
3. Instructions – Guidance for how Surfboard should maintain the board

Common board types:

• Account health trackers
• Sprint and PR dashboards
• Campaign performance views
• Meeting prep briefs
• Status updates and reports
• Incident post-mortems

Working with Boards

A few features help you stay in control of how boards change over time:

• Undo – Revert the last edit to a board with a single click. Useful when a refresh introduces something you want to roll back.
• Duplicate – Copy any board to use as a starting point for a new one. The duplicate inherits the original's instructions and structure.
• Approvals – If Surfboard wants to make an edit that goes beyond what the board is normally tracking (for example, pulling in a new source or adding a section you didn't ask for), it pauses and asks you to approve the change first.
• Scheduled Updates – Set boards to refresh on a cadence (daily, weekly, or before key meetings) so your dashboards stay current without manual effort.
• Subscribe – Click the bell icon on any board to receive notifications when it updates. Choose All updates (every refresh or manual update) or Notable updates only (only when Surfboard flags a significant change). Subscribed boards also appear in the Subscribed section on your workspace Projects tab for quick access.

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Projects

A project is a home for a specific initiative — a product launch, a customer rollout, a quarterly push. It groups related boards, sources, and team context in one place. When you start a project, Surfboard reads the tools you've connected and fills in timelines, key decisions, and the people involved automatically, so you're not setting it up from scratch. Each project has:

• Boards – Living dashboards that stay current
• Sources – Which tools and data to focus on
• Team – People involved in the project
• Context – Persistent notes about stakeholders, cadences, and decisions

Common use cases:

• Customer relationship management
• Product launches
• Cross-functional team initiatives
• Ongoing operations (sales, support, engineering)

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Workspaces

A workspace is your container for all work in Surfboard. When you sign up, a workspace is automatically created for you. A workspace contains:

• All your projects (private and shared)
• All your boards (including those not yet assigned to a project)
• Team members you've invited
• Connected sources (Gmail, Slack, Drive, etc.)

Key features:

• Privacy: Your workspace data is encrypted and isolated from other workspaces
• Team collaboration: Invite teammates to join your workspace and access shared projects
• Source management: All sources are connected at the workspace level and available across all projects
• Settings: Manage integrations, billing, and team permissions from workspace settings

Common questions:

• Can I have multiple workspaces? Currently, each user has one workspace
• Who can see my workspace? Only people you explicitly invite
• What happens when I invite someone? They join your workspace and can access shared (non-private) projects

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Sharing & Access

Surfboard supports three sharing modes: invite by email for specific people with view or edit access, workspace sharing for your whole team with view or edit access, and public link sharing for read-only access without requiring a sign-in.

How sharing works:

1. Click the Share button in the top right of any board or project
2. Enter the email address of the person you want to share with
3. Choose their access level — View (read-only) or Edit (can modify content and refresh data)
4. Send the invite — the recipient gets a secure link by email and access is granted the moment they sign in. There's no separate invitation acceptance step.

If the recipient doesn't have a Surfboard account yet, they're prompted to create one with the invited email when they open the link.

Workspace sharing:

To share with your whole team:

1. Click the Share button in the top right of any board or project
2. Under General access, change the dropdown from Restricted to Anyone in workspace
3. Choose the access level - View (read-only) or Edit (can modify content and refresh data)
4. Click Copy link at the bottom of the dialog - anyone in your workspace can now open it without an individual invite

Unlike public sharing, recipients still need to be signed in to a workspace account.

Public link sharing:

To share a document publicly:

1. Click the Share button in the top right of any board or project
2. Under General access, change the dropdown from Restricted to Public
3. Click Copy link at the bottom of the dialog - anyone with the link can now view without signing in

A sign-in button is available for recipients who want to open the full app.

Managing access:

The same Share dialog shows everyone who currently has access. From there you can:

• Change access level – Upgrade a viewer to an editor, or vice versa
• Revoke access – Remove someone from the board or project
• See who has access – Full list of collaborators with their permission levels

Owners have full control over visibility. If someone tries to open a link they don't have access to, they see a "You need access" screen and can request it — the owner can grant access directly from that request, which sends the person an email invitation.

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Notifications

Surfboard can alert you — in-app and by email — when boards and documents you care about are updated. Notifications are driven by subscriptions: you opt in per board, choose how sensitive you want the alerts to be, and Surfboard handles the rest.

Subscribing to a board

Click the bell icon on any board page. Choose a level:

• All updates — you're notified every time the board is updated, whether by a scheduled refresh, a manual "Update" click, or any agent edit.
• Notable updates only — you're notified only when Surfboard explicitly flags the update as significant (a major status change, a new risk, a meaningful shift in the data). Routine refreshes with no material change produce no notification at this level.

To unsubscribe, click the bell again and select None.

How you receive notifications

• In-app — A toast appears when a new notification arrives while Surfboard is open. The bell icon in the header shows a badge for unread items; click it for a grouped dropdown, or open the full Notifications page for longer history.
• Email — Notifications are sent to your account email. Email is on by default; turn it off in Settings → Notifications.

Subscribed section

Boards and documents you've subscribed to appear in the Subscribed section at the top of your workspace Projects tab — up to 5 rows by default, expandable to 15. This gives you one-click access to the boards you care about, separate from the full file browser.

Notification settings

Go to Settings → Notifications to turn email or in-app notifications on or off globally. Per-board subscription level is always controlled from the bell icon on the board page itself.