Appearance
Team and rooms
Team is where you work with your AI teammates. Each teammate has a room: the place where you give it work, answer its questions and approve what it prepares.
A room looks after one area of your business: government bids, your inbox, your books, or anything else you set up. It works like a Slack channel shared with the AI teammate who does that work. You give directions, the teammate carries them out, and results show up for you to act on.
Where to find them
Team in the left sidebar lists your teammates, one row per room. Each row shows the teammate's name, with the room's name next to it:
- Rory runs RFP Operations. Rory finds RFPs, brings you the calls only you can make, and drafts proposals.
- Max runs Email Chief of Staff. Max sorts what needs you and holds drafts for your review.
- A room you set up yourself is listed by its lead's name. Your own rooms can still have several teammates inside.
Click a row to open that room. Click Team itself to open the Team page, which shows:
- The ready-made rooms: RFP Operations, Email Chief of Staff and QuickBooks Accountant. If one isn't installed yet, its tile says Use this room. See Ready-made Rooms.
- Rooms you set up yourself. See Set up your own Room.
- Add a teammate, to describe something new or install a ready-made room. The + next to Team in the sidebar opens the same page.
Each installed room shows when it last worked and when it will work next. When a room is waiting on you, its row gets a badge and the Team item in the sidebar gets an amber dot.
What's in a room
Every room has a name that starts with #, like # mailroom or # rfp-ops. A room has three parts:
- The conversation. Your messages, the teammate's replies and any questions it needs you to answer.
- The wall, on the right. Every room has the same four tabs:
- Work: cards that need a decision or action, like a drafted reply or an expense to approve.
- Artifacts: documents the room has written, like briefs, reports and proposals.
- Activity: the room's background checks or searches, what's running now, what's coming up next, and past work.
- Channels: ways to reach the room from outside Pencel, such as by email. A room that can't use one yet says so.
- The header: the room's name, its teammate's face and one ⋯ menu, Room options. The menu has Settings, Crew, Schedule, Pause room (or Resume room) and Archive or remove…, plus Setup guide when the room has one to show.
Use Show wall and Hide wall to give the conversation more space. On a narrow window, the wall takes over the screen and Back to room returns you to the conversation.
Talk to a room
Type in the message box at the bottom, the way you would message a colleague. The box names who you're talking to, for example "Message Rory, or type / for actions".
- Ask for something. "Which of this week's bids fit us best?" or "Draft a polite reply declining the meeting."
- Point at something. Type
@to pick a file, a document, a guideline or a specific teammate. - Drop in a file. Drag a file in or use the paperclip. Pencel asks whether to Keep it for the room (every future message can use it) or Attach once (just for this message).
- Give it a standing rule. Say "always flag anything over $50K" and the room confirms it with "Saved as a standing rule". The rule applies to all future work in that room. Click Edit rules to change it later.
- Follow up. After a reply, up to three suggested next steps appear under it. Click one to start your next message.
While the room is working, the Send button turns into Stop. Press it (or Esc) to cancel. A room works on one request at a time, so anything you send meanwhile waits its turn.
Talk about one card
Click any card on the wall and the next message you send is about that card. A chip above the message box shows which card you're discussing.
Use the room's actions
The jobs you ask for most sit as chips just above the message box, up to three per room. Click one, or type / in the message box to list them.
| Room | Actions |
|---|---|
| RFP Operations | Search for RFPs, plus Search every morning while the daily search is off. |
| Email Chief of Staff | Check my inbox. Choose New since last check, Whole inbox or Resume saved check. |
| A room that works through a queue, such as accounting | Work the queue (a small card asks you to confirm first) or Pause the queue. |
| Other rooms | Run a task, once the room has replied for the first time. |
When a room needs you
Rooms never guess about things that matter. Every question or approval waiting for you is its own card in the conversation. If some are scrolled out of view, a button at the bottom of the conversation, such as 2 waiting for you, jumps to them. The room's row on Team gets a badge too, and the same items appear on Home.
There are two kinds of requests:
- Approvals. Before the room sends an email, changes a record, or moves money, it shows you exactly what it's about to do. You can approve it, Reject it, or Edit fields first. For routine actions you trust, Always Allow stops the room asking about that action in that room. Anything that moves money or deletes something asks every time. See Approvals and permissions.
- Questions. Sometimes a room needs information only you have, such as which account to use or what counts as urgent. If you don't answer a simple question within a few minutes, the room goes ahead with the option it recommended and tells you what it picked.
Buttons on a card
Some cards offer a button the room suggests, such as Draft a note to the vendor, or a fix such as Reconnect QuickBooks. You can also choose More › Tell the room what to do… and type your own instruction.
When you click, the card shows what happens next, right where you clicked: Queued while the room finishes something else, Working on it, then a line saying what was done. If the room couldn't do it, the card says why and offers Try again. If the room needs your OK before it sends or changes something, the approval appears on the card. Buttons the room suggests always ask before anything leaves Pencel, even if you chose Always Allow for that action.
Rooms that work on their own
You don't have to ask a room for everything. Each teammate in a room has responsibilities: standing jobs it does without being asked. For example, it might check for new bids each morning or review new email every 30 minutes.
- When there's nothing new, the room stays quiet. You won't get "nothing to report" messages.
- When it finds something, it posts a card in the room and, if it needs you, on Home.
- Every room has a health check. The room's lead teammate looks for work that's stuck and suggests fixes. It can only suggest. It can never give itself more access or a bigger budget.
To change when a room works, open its settings and go to Schedule. See Run work on a schedule.
See what the room did on its own
Open the room's Activity tab. It starts with the room's own routine work:
- Background checks: when the last check ran, when the next one is due, and past checks.
- Searches, in the RFP room: the last search and how many new bids it found, the next search, and recent searches. See RFP Operations.
While a check runs, one quiet line in the room says so, for example "Checking your inbox…". Click View activity to follow it.
If background checks stop, the teammate tells you once in the conversation. Click Resume checks to start them again, See what happened to find out why, or Not now. Checks stop only after two failed checks in a row. Restarting the app, cancelling a check, pressing Stop or pausing never stops them.
Room settings
Click the room's name at the top of the room, or choose Settings in ⋯ Room options, to open its settings.
| Tab | What you can do |
|---|---|
| About | Set the room's Goal and its Instructions (one rule per line). See the documents that guide the room, including the rules you gave in chat, and attach more with + Attach doc. Changes save when you click away. |
| Crew | See each teammate, what it's responsible for and when it last worked. Add a teammate with + Add teammate, or remove one you added. |
| Schedule | Pause room or Resume it. Turn Work in the background on or off and choose how often it checks (every 15 minutes up to once a day). Press Check now for an immediate check. Turn each routine on or off, or Run now. |
| Knowledge | Add files and documents just for this room with + Add knowledge, share a document with every room, and see what the room knows about your company. See Knowledge. |
| Advanced | See every account and tool the room can use and whether it asks first. Revoke an approval you granted. Set a Monthly budget. Archive, start over or remove the room. |
Some screens still call the Schedule tab Rhythm. It's the same place.
Ready-made Rooms and your own
Ready-made Rooms come fully set up for a specific job. Install one, answer a question or two, and it starts working. See Ready-made Rooms.
Your own rooms start from a description. Click Add a teammate (the + next to Team), describe what you want looked after and click Create room. The room's lead then asks what it still needs in the conversation, one question at a time, connects the accounts it needs from a card, and proposes settings you accept. See Set up your own Room.
Talk to an agent that isn't on your Team
You talk to a teammate in its room. To talk to any other agent, use the message box on Home. Its agent picker lists Auto, AI Assistant and your agents that aren't on your Team.
To make one of those agents a teammate with its own room:
- Start the Add to Team step one of two ways:
- While you chat with the agent on Home, a line above the message box says it isn't on your Team. Click Add to Team on that line.
- Or open the agent in Studio ▸ Agents and click Add to Team.
- Say what the agent should keep on top of.
- Click Add to Team. Pencel creates the room with that agent as its teammate, and the room asks for anything else it needs.
If the agent already runs a room, Add to Team opens that room instead.
Your past one-to-one chats with teammates are kept. Find them in Home's chat history, under the agent's name, or search for them with ⌘K.
Money and budgets
Rooms use AI credits from your plan or your own API key. By default a room can use your whole account budget. To give a room its own limit, open its settings, go to Advanced ▸ Monthly budget and enter a number of credits. The room shows how much it has spent and how much is left.
When a room hits its limit, its scheduled work pauses, and a banner in the room explains why. Nothing is lost. Raise the limit or wait for next month and it picks up again. See Control what you spend.
Good to know
- Rooms work while Pencel is open. Scheduled checks need the app open and your computer awake. If Pencel was closed, work resumes the next time you open it.
- Rooms are private to you. Pencel is single-user today, so a room's teammates are AI, not other people.
- Each room sees only its own work. Your inbox room doesn't see your bids, and your bid room doesn't read your email. Company knowledge you share with every room is the exception.
- Nothing is lost if something goes wrong. If Pencel closes in the middle of a task, the room either picks up where it left off or tells you plainly what happened.