🏛️ The Executive Dossier: Sovereign Local Workspace
The Executive Dossier is the foundational workspace architecture of AMBA. Unlike conventional chatbots that keep your documents in ephemeral web sessions or proprietary cloud silos, AMBA anchors every project to a real folder on your local computer, organized into two zones: your Sources and the workspace.
All your enterprise data remains 100% local, guaranteeing privacy, compliance, and zero risk of sensitive business leaks to external cloud storage.
📂 Sources and the Workspace
Inside every AMBA project folder there are two zones:
Your Project Folder/
├── 📥 Sources (sources/) (Every file you or your channels supplied — read-only for agents)
│ ├── uploads/ files you add by hand
│ └── <source>/<YYYY-MM-DD>/ files that arrived from Telegram, Drive or a folder, by day
└── 🗂️ Workspace (Everything else — organised the way you like)
├── reports/ deliverables by default (scheduled reports in reports/<YYYY-MM>/)
└── workings/ drafts, plans and scratch files1. 📥 Sources — The Vault of Record
This is where every input lives:
- Bank statement exports (
.xlsx,.csv). - Supplier invoices and billing registries (
.pdf,.csv). - Client RFP briefs, presentation requirements, and contractor quotes.
- Company rate cards and internal guidelines.
Files you add in the app are kept in sources/uploads/; files that arrive from a connected source (a Telegram group, a Google Drive folder, a local folder) are filed under that source and the day they belong to, e.g. sources/<source>/2026-10-07/. In the file tree each source is an item with its days below it; click a source to see its ingestion history: what arrived, what was skipped and why.
Sealed Read-Only Guarantee
AMBA treats Sources (the sources/ folder on your disk) as strictly read-only for agents, in every mode. The assistant can read, parse, query, and analyze files, but it is forbidden from modifying, overwriting, moving, or deleting them: results always go to a new file in the workspace. You can still edit a source file yourself; AMBA keeps the previous version and marks the figures taken from it as needs re-check.
2. 🗂️ The Workspace — Organised Your Way
Everything outside Sources is the workspace. There are no mandatory sub-folders: you and your agents organise it freely, and deliverables go where you ask. When you do not say, AMBA uses two conventions:
- Report folder
reports/: finished deliverables — workbooks (.xlsx), Word memos (.docx), decks and PDF reports. Scheduled reports go into one folder per month, e.g.reports/2026-10/. workings/: the assistant's drafting room — step-by-step plans (workings/plans/), drafts (workings/drafts/), calculation sheets and staging tables used to verify formulas.
Clean Desk Mode
To keep your workspace uncluttered, AMBA turns on Clean Desk Mode by default. Internal database files and temporary engine logs in workings/ remain hidden, highlighting only active plans and key evidence tables. You can always click Show All whenever you wish to inspect system files.
3. ✅ Final Is a State, Not a Folder
A deliverable is final when a process delivered it or when you mark it final in the file tree — wherever it is saved. You can still keep your own final/ folder if you like.
Physical Verification Guarantee
Before concluding any run, AMBA physically validates the deliverables the run wrote in the workspace: ensuring files exist, meet non-zero size standards, and open seamlessly in your standard desktop applications (Excel, Word, Acrobat).
Projects created before version 0.5.13
Older projects used three fixed folders (input/, workings/, output/). AMBA moved them automatically, once: files in input/ went to Sources (sources/uploads/…, or sources/<source>/<day>/ for files that came from a source), while workings/ and output/ stayed where they were as ordinary workspace folders.
⚙️ Streamlined 3-Tab Project Settings
Project management in AMBA is designed for non-technical business professionals. Clicking the Project Settings icon in the header opens a clean, focused 3-tab dialog:
- General:
- Project Name & Description.
- Primary Locale Selection (
en,vi,ja,ko), determining the language of executive summaries and generated deliverables. - Sovereign folder paths on your local machine.
- Permissions & Security:
- Intuitive, non-technical Allow / Deny segmented controls.
- Filesystem Sandbox policy, Web Search toggles, Terminal execution locks, and MCP plugin permissions.
- Danger Zone:
- Safe project deletion with confirmation safeguards to prevent accidental data loss.
Native Core Architecture
In AMBA, mathematical calculations and analytical SQL queries are handled directly by the native Rust runtime, while operational scheduling is managed through agent profiles, processes and your Sources. This eliminates bloated settings tabs and keeps project configuration immediate, clean, and distraction-free.
🖱️ Interacting with the Dossier in AMBA Studio
In the AMBA Studio interface, managing your dossier is fast and intuitive:
- Drag & Drop: Drop source contracts or spreadsheets directly into Sources (they are kept in
sources/uploads/). - Open in Finder / Explorer: Click the folder icon in the studio header to reveal the actual project folder on your computer.
- Instant Preview & Export: Click any deliverable to open an immediate preview, launch it in your default desktop software, or print to PDF with a single click.
🧠 How the agent knows your project
Agents do not guess what is in your project. Before every run AMBA hands the agent a short, sourced picture of it, built from your files on this computer:
- Your files: for each workbook its sheets, header row, columns (number, date, text), number of rows, date range and totals row; for documents and decks their title and headings; the business date of each inbound file; your currency and number format.
- Figures checked in a file: when an agent reads a figure with a tool, it records it with its source (file, sheet and cell). AMBA opens that cell to confirm the value before keeping it. Figures in the key-figures card of a finished result are kept the same way.
- Your rules: what you say in chat ("our fiscal year starts in April", "always VND, no decimals") is kept with your exact words.
If a file changes, the figures taken from it are marked needs re-check and the agent reads the file again. Anything that is not listed is read from the files or asked — never estimated.
Open the project header → What the agent knows to see it all. If something is wrong, Remove it. It is stored in the project folder (.amba/context.json, hidden), so it moves with the project, and it never leaves your computer except inside the request to the AI model you chose (with your privacy masking applied).
Memory vs project context
AMBA gives an agent two different things, and shows you both:
| Project context | Memory | |
|---|---|---|
| What | Facts read from your files, your stated rules | Notes you saved, documents a connector delivered |
| Where to see it | Project header → What the agent knows | Settings → Memory |
| Written by | AMBA, from your files (checked) | You (Ingest Knowledge on an answer, New note), or an agent when you ask it to remember something |
- Save a note: under an agent's answer, click Ingest Knowledge and choose who may use it: All agents of this project (default) or Only this agent. Nothing is saved to memory automatically.
- See what was used: an answer that recalled saved notes shows Memory used (n). Open it to see each note; Remove one that is wrong or outdated. Nothing is shown when no note was used.
- Manage memory: Settings → Memory lists every note with its project, who can use it, its source and who created it. Filter by project and agent; search uses the same filters. Edit or delete a note, or Mark as global knowledge so every agent in every project can use it (document excerpts stay in their project). Clear removes exactly what the filters show: this agent in this project, the whole project, or everything — always after you confirm.
- A note of one project is never given to an agent working in another project.