Core concepts

Use this page as the mental model for Titan. It is the shortest read for users who arrive with strong habits from Word, Google Docs, Overleaf, Jupyter, Cursor, or RStudio and want to know what Titan does the same and what it does differently.

If you have not opened the app yet, read Workspace tour first — that page answers where things live on screen. This page answers how the pieces fit together underneath.

Where your work is saved

Most apps put work in one place. Titan uses two project states:

Private. The project is not published to cloud yet. Private projects can be either browser-backed (this browser only) or folder-backed (this device folder). In both cases, the project does not show up on your other devices until you publish it.
Published. The project has a cloud copy and can be opened across devices according to sharing permissions.

This page is about project state. Connectivity (Synced, Connecting..., Offline) is separate and shown in collaboration status.

Projects and files

A project is the container. Files live inside it.

Project-level state is the things that apply to everything in the project: name, state/backing (Private or Published, plus private backing type), sharing metadata, and the conversation history for the agent. File-level state is per file: path, extension, content, and which editor opens it.

A project usually mixes file types. A typical one might hold a few .md writeups, an .ipynb notebook, two .csv datasets, and a folder of figures. Titan does not separate them by type in the explorer; the folder structure is yours.

See Projects and File workspace for the details.

How files become editors

Titan picks the editor by file extension, not by some “open with” dialog. A .md file opens in the prose editor, a .csv opens in the data viewer, an .ipynb opens in the notebook editor, a .docx opens in the DOCX editor. You can rename a file’s extension to change the editor it uses, with the obvious caveat that the file’s content has to match the new editor.

A few editors have a Code / Visual mode toggle in the status bar. It is available for the markdown family (.md, .myst) and a few related formats. Visual is closer to Word; Code is closer to a Markdown source view. The chosen mode is remembered per file, on this device.

See Markup formats for the format-to-editor map, and Editing modes for the toggle’s behavior.

The AI assistant

The AI sits in the right pane under AI Chat. It is closest to having Cursor or Claude Code inside the app, except it can also read non-code files: your prose, your CSV, your Kanban board.

What the agent reads as context, and what it does not, is its own page. If you are about to use the assistant for the first time, the one-screen version is What the agent can see.

The agent can also propose edits to files. Those edits go through an approval step before they land, so you can review them the way you would review a pull request. See Agent actions and approvals.

A project is yours alone until you share it. Sharing a project from the header does two things: it creates a server copy, and it lets people you give access edit alongside you in real time. The status bar shows a collaboration state (Synced, Connecting…, Offline, View only) once a server copy exists.

Sharing does not change where your local copy lives or how it behaves offline. The local copy stays usable with or without network. Reconnect, and Titan reconciles state.

See Sharing and permissions and Real-time collaboration.

Privacy posture

Titan is local-by-default. Private projects stay on your device unless you publish. Published projects have a server copy by definition. The header storage icon and the status bar’s Private badge tell you, at a glance, which state you are in.

See Storage and privacy for the precise behavior, including what happens to data on the server when you stop sharing.

Next steps

Quickstart — the smallest end-to-end example.
Workspace tour — orientation in the shell.
What the agent can see — first stop before using the AI panel.