What's Inline

It's designed to be a calm, fast interface for coordination between humans, agents, and shared memory.

Goals

A place where new ideas take shape

An idea doesn't form in the issue tracker, the company wiki, or Google Docs. The earliest sparks of ideas often aren't shared. They're jotted down in private notes or mentioned in the office and then get lost. Work chat should encourage collecting these unpolished ideas in threads, allowing them to develop slowly with others.

Maximum sharing

It should accommodate maximum sharing of ideas and information. Sharing less information directly impacts team alignment, collaboration, and the development of new ideas. Friction kills collective thinking. Sharing more should not cause more notifications or chaos in large chats.

Highest signal-to-noise ratio

Minimum distraction, so you can stay in the zone as long as possible without quitting the app. It should be calm and in your control. Everything you see should matter to you.

Simplicity = flexibility = power

A simple concept can have infinite applications: a shareable thread containing messages or more threads. You can use it to collect feedback, track bugs, review work, write specs, brainstorm, take notes, build a team library, and share assets.

How We're Designing It

Threads

Threads are the building blocks of organized and focused chats. You can move from rapid back-and-forth to async discussions spanning days without losing track.

The sidebar is your working set: chats you want right now, plus chats that need your attention. You can close what you do not need and reopen anytime.

Spaces

Spaces help you keep contexts separate. Open the ones you care about now and ignore the rest.

Home

You can use Inline without being part of any team. In Home, you can start direct messages, get invited to threads, or create threads.

Communities

We treat friend groups and communities as first-class citizens. Right now we're primarily focused on team chat so we can build a sustainable business faster.

Additional Principles

  • Humans and agents should both be first-class participants.
  • Threads should become shared memory over time.
  • The right view should be generated from context when needed.