Signals · opinion
Data-sync — desktop & mobile
The desktop application is the complex one, and deliberately so. It runs the modern side of an agent operating system: teams of agents, workflows that hold their shape, integrations that reach servers, systems large enough to be worth calling systems. The mobile app is not trying to be that.
Two things live in both, and they are the two that matter.
Desktop
Built to keep things. Teams of agents, workflows, server integrations — work that is meant to still be standing months from now, on a screen big enough to hold it.
Mobile
Built for the moment. Mini apps: more temporary by nature, less computational investment behind them, and useful out of all proportion to what they cost to make.
What that means in practice
Ask for an image, a video, or a piece of text on the phone. If your administrator has also handed you a desktop device on the same email, that result is on the desktop too — not later, and not after an export. You work on two devices and the shot is simply in both places.
Artifacts run both ways. Build something on mobile and it can show up on the desktop; build it on the desktop and it can be there in your pocket. The capabilities are the same on either side — what differs is the horizon each one was designed for.
Following
Not everything should land everywhere, so the sync is not a firehose. Objects work on a follow logic: something created on the desktop can be followed on the other device, or left where it is. You decide which things travel with you.
Once an object is followed, it syncs bidirectionally, automatically. No exporting, no copy that quietly falls behind — one object, two devices.
The chat is the part we made lightest to move. It synchronises across devices immediately, because that is the thread you actually pick back up — the artifact is the output, the conversation is the work.