Getting Started
Connect the work, establish one current state, and put it to use.
The goal of your first session is simple: take one piece of active work from scattered information to a current, source-backed state that a teammate or agent can use. Allow about fifteen minutes.
When you first sign in
Choose whether you are setting up Jackdaw for yourself, a family, or a team. The assistant then asks a few questions about the people, work, priorities, and constraints that matter in that workspace.
Answer in your own words and skip anything that is not useful. Jackdaw follows one rule: We save what you tell us. We ask about what we figure out. Identity details, conflicts, and consequential inferred changes still wait for your review.
1. Connect two or three high-signal sources
Open Connections and start where real decisions and changes tend to appear:
- Email (Gmail or Outlook) — commitments, customer context, and decisions made outside formal project tools.
- Calendar — the meetings and people connected to the work.
- GitHub, GitLab, or Linear — implementation, ownership, blockers, and delivery state.
- Documents or chat — plans, meeting notes, and the discussion around what changed.
Authorize each source. Jackdaw syncs in the background, and the first sync can take a few minutes.
Do not connect everything at once. Two or three high-signal sources make it easier to see whether Jackdaw has understood the work correctly.
2. Choose one active piece of work
Open the Wiki and choose a project, customer, decision, or goal that matters now. Read the page the way a teammate joining the work would:
- Is the current decision explicit?
- Is the owner clear?
- Are the evidence and conditions attached?
- Can you tell what changed and what remains unresolved?
Add anything important that only lives in your head. Type [[ to connect the page to a person, project, decision, or other related subject.
Tip: press ⌘K any time to jump directly to a person, project, or page.
3. Resolve one useful change
Open the Inbox and review something Jackdaw inferred from a connected source or AI. Approve it if it accurately reflects the current state; reject it if it does not.
When new information conflicts with something you or the team already established, Jackdaw keeps the competing versions visible and asks before changing what is current. The goal is not to approve more information. It is to make the right information trustworthy.
If Jackdaw has not surfaced a useful item yet, tell the assistant a durable decision or constraint in plain language:
“For the Northwind rollout, do not schedule the remaining accounts until the security review is complete.”
4. Put the current state to work
Now ask the assistant or a connected AI:
“What is the current state of the Northwind rollout? What is settled, what is blocked, and what may happen next?”
Check that the answer includes the decision, owner, evidence, and boundaries you just established. From there you can build a Jackdaw agent for ongoing work or connect another AI over MCP.
You are set up
That is the Jackdaw loop: bring the work in, establish what is current, act from it, and return useful learning for review. The value compounds as more of the team and its agents use the same operating context.