# Artifacts

> The documents, reports, and files an agent produces — where they live, how to read and export them, and how link sharing works.

An **artifact** is something an agent produced that is worth keeping — a report, a document, a dataset, a diagram. Instead of being buried in a transcript, it gets its own page.

## When you get one

The agent decides. Ask for something substantial — *"write up the findings"*, *"produce the weekly summary"* — and it saves the result as an artifact and links it in the conversation. You can also ask directly: *"save that as an artifact"*.

Short answers stay in the conversation, which is the right default. An artifact is for output you will come back to.

## Working with them

**In the conversation**, an artifact appears as a card you can open without leaving the thread.

**On its own page**, you get the full content, a preview for the formats that support one, and export. The agent can read its own artifacts back later, which is what makes a chain of work possible — draft in one conversation, revise in the next.

**In the agent's Inventory**, every artifact it has produced is listed. Pin the ones you return to so they stay at the top.

## From artifacts to an app

When an agent has produced a set of files that work together — a page, a small tool, a dashboard — you can promote them into an **app**. An app has its own page, opens as a working thing rather than a document, and can be shared by link the same way an artifact is.

Promotion is a **move**: the artifacts become the app's first version and the original entries go away. That keeps one copy of the truth, so the same result does not appear twice in your lists. The originals are removed only after the app is saved — if saving fails, nothing is lost.

An app opens in one of two modes:

- **Viewer** — the result, and nothing else around it. This is what a link recipient sees.
- **Canvas** — the app beside the conversation, so you can ask for a change and watch it land.

## Sharing by link

An artifact is **private to you** by default. Turning on link sharing produces a URL that opens that one artifact.

What a link grants:

| Grants | Does not grant |
| --- | --- |
| Read access to this artifact | Access to any other artifact |
| Nothing else | The conversation it came from |
| | Your agent, its memory, or your account |

Anyone with the link can open it, so treat it as public. Turning sharing off makes the link stop working — an artifact that is not shared is not found by URL at all, whether or not someone guessed it.

<Aside type="caution" title="Check the contents before you share">
  An artifact an agent wrote from your email or documents may quote them. Read it
  before you turn on the link.
</Aside>

## Limits

- **No version history.** Updating an artifact replaces its contents. If you need the previous state, export it first or ask the agent to save a separate artifact.
- Artifacts belong to the agent that produced them and to you. Another agent does not read them unless you point it at one.
- Link sharing is read-only, and it is one link per artifact — there is no per-person access.
- Deleting an agent does not delete its artifacts.

## Related

<CardGrid>
  <LinkCard
    title="Projects"
    href="/docs/capabilities/projects/"
    description="Grouping the work an artifact belongs to."
  />
  <LinkCard
    title="Routines"
    href="/docs/automate/routines/"
    description="Scheduled work whose output is usually an artifact."
  />
  <LinkCard
    title="Security and permissions"
    href="/docs/account/security/"
    description="What is private, what is shared, and what an agent can reach."
  />
</CardGrid>