Progressive disclosure¶
Open Cowork keeps the default Desktop experience on the hero workbench:
Home · Chat · Projects · Team · Playbooks · Tools & Skills · Settings
Secondary Studio surfaces stay hidden until explicitly enabled so solo users are not flooded with incomplete or ops-heavy pages.
Feature flags¶
Configured under features in open-cowork.config.json (or overlays).
| Key | Default when omitted | Enable when |
|---|---|---|
projects | on | Always for thesis (set false only to hide) |
team | on | Always for thesis |
playbooks | on | Always for thesis |
tools | on | Always for thesis |
knowledge | off | Teams use propose/review knowledge spaces |
approvals | off | Multi-thread operators need a cross-chat queue |
channels | off | Cloud + Channel Gateway deployments |
artifacts | off | Heavy cross-session deliverable browse |
voice | off | Private realtime voice (Desktop Local; Aurum STT + sibling TTS) |
Implementation: DESKTOP_PRIMARY_FEATURE_KEYS / DESKTOP_SECONDARY_FEATURE_KEYS and isDesktopFeatureEnabled in packages/shared/src/app-config.ts.
Deploy profiles (recommended)¶
| Profile | Enable secondaries | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Solo desktop | none | Public default |
| Team cloud | optional approvals, artifacts | After Always-allow / library readiness |
| Channel ops | channels (+ Cloud) | Requires Cloud Channel Gateway |
| Knowledge-heavy | knowledge | Not a substitute for Wiki product |
Prerequisites before enabling¶
| Flag | Prerequisite |
|---|---|
channels | Cloud workspace + Channel Gateway; empty local-only is confusing |
approvals | Prefer Always-allow story complete for local; queue still useful for allow/deny/questions |
knowledge | Users understand Knowledge ≠ Wiki |
artifacts | Artifact index paths work for the authority in use |
voice | Desktop Local only; voice host + Aurum STT + local OS TTS + PTT/conversation; Cloud Web / remote stay not_supported; dogfood: voice-private-dogfood.md; ADR |
Public open-cowork.config.json must not enable secondary keys by default and must not auto-register Wiki or durable Gateway MCP entries.