Your first workspace session

Use this guide when your Neural Labs instance is already running. To host your own instance, start with Quick setup.

Sign in and connect Alshival

1. Open your instance's /signup page and create an account, or use /login for Microsoft sign-in if your administrator enabled it.
2. Wait for administrator approval. A pending account cannot enter the desktop.
3. Open /workspace. The dock launches Alshival, Files, Terminal, VS Code, Skills, and Settings. A new browser profile starts with an empty desktop.
4. Open Settings → Model Provider → OpenAI and connect your own ChatGPT account using the displayed sign-in URL and one-time code.
5. Open Alshival, create a private conversation, and send your first request.

The account connection and usable model must be confirmed before private Alshival can answer. See AI accounts and models for connection troubleshooting, pause/resume, background work, and dedicated Team accounts.

Work on a project

Open Files, create a project folder, and upload files or create a new text file. Text and code open in VS Code. Terminal starts shells in the same workspace, and Alshival can help with those files.

Files, VS Code, terminals, and agent tools share /home/node/workspace. In a normal Alshival chat, Codex and Claude Code can run terminal commands inside the selected workspace's isolated container, subject to tool approvals. Changes saved there are immediately part of the shared project tree. Files refreshes when another user or a tool changes a directory. Use Open Preview for a static website or supported media, and Edit image for raster images.

See Files and previews, VS Code, and Terminal for detailed workflows. Files' shared Trash can recover normal deletions for 90 days; it is not a backup.

Reuse skills and run automations

Open Skills to browse My Skills and Team Skills or build a reusable workflow. Use $skill-name in Alshival to invoke an enabled skill. Drafts autosave; publishing makes a skill available to the live catalog. Test in Alshival lets you try a snapshot before publication.

The Automations dock shortcut opens the Automations section of Skills. Members can inspect operational status and run eligible AI tasks with their own connected account. Administrators manage schedules and publish automations. Scheduled work uses the job's configured agent and keeps running while browsers are closed, as long as the workspace is running.

Read Skills and Automations for permissions, subscriptions, and run behavior.

Collaborate with teammates

Use Team chats inside Alshival to create a channel for selected teammates or Everyone. Mention @Alshival for an agent request, or select a skill with $. An ordinary user mention does not invoke the agent. The administrator's Team account configuration determines which account runs Team requests.

Start a Team Terminal for a shared shell. A terminal opened from a restricted Team Chat follows that channel's membership; a workspace-wide Team Terminal is available to all approved users. Team terminals accept concurrent input, so coordinate commands with other participants.

Private conversation lists and personal terminal tabs are separated in the app, but all approved developers share one operating-system trust domain. Uploaded Team Chat attachments may be in shared Files regardless of the channel's membership. Read Sharing and privacy and Team Chats before sharing sensitive work.

Personalize and return later

Settings → Personalization manages appearance, your profile, and notification preferences. Security manages sign-in methods, passkeys, and phone verification. Microsoft must be linked before you can enroll a passkey.

Window positions and open apps are remembered per user and browser profile. They do not roam to another device. Minimize keeps a live app mounted. Closing Alshival or a Terminal window does not stop its server-side run or shell; use its explicit Stop or terminal end action when you want that work to end. See Desktop layout.

What survives a restart?

Saved project files, published skills, draft state, editor settings, and AI credentials live in persistent volumes. Team Chat and account records live in PostgreSQL. They survive container recreation when the deployment retains its volumes.

Running terminal processes end when the workspace container is recreated. Packages installed interactively with sudo apt change only the current container layer and disappear on replacement. Ask the operator to add durable system tools to the workspace image.

For instance health, updates, and backups, see Manage your instance.