New Workspace: Work with 1000s of files

Perfect for Obsidian Vaults too!

AuthorAuthor

Samuel ROY & Olivier Legris
January 09, 2026

Hey everyone,

We're thrilled to introduce our re-designed Workspaces, a powerful new way to organize and interact with your files in Alter, inspired by how Claude Code manages files.

Whether you're managing research documents, Obsidian vaults, project files, or any other collection, Workspaces make it effortless to search, retrieve, and work with thousands of files using AI.

What Are Workspaces?

Workspaces are dedicated environments where you can:

  1. Add and organize files – Import your documents, vaults, and collections in one place

  2. Get intelligent suggestions – Every new chat shows AI-powered question suggestions based on your workspace content

  3. Search intelligently – Use natural language to find exactly what you need across thousands of files

  4. Filter your history – Keep your chat history organized by workspace, so you only see relevant interactions

How to Get Started

  1. Open Alter Hub and click the workspace menu at the top

  2. Select "New Workspace" and add your folders or files (Obsidian vaults, PDFs, documents, etc.)

  3. Click the auto-description icon to generate a workspace summary instantly

  4. Start chatting—Alter will suggest relevant questions and search your files intelligently

Key Features

🔍 Intelligent Search & Retrieval Our new search and list tools work together to find information across your entire workspace, no matter how large.

💡 Smart Question Suggestions Every conversation starts with AI-generated questions tailored to your workspace content—get started instantly.

đź“Š Transparent Tool Usage Click on any tool to see exactly how Alter searched your files and fulfilled your request.

🔄 Automatic Indexing Add, remove, or modify files anytime—they're automatically indexed and ready to search.

🚀 Coming Soon We're working on write and modify tools so you can create and edit files directly in Alter.

For the best Workspace experience, we recommend using advanced and premium models:

  • Anthropic's latest models

  • GPT-5.2

  • GLM-4.7 on Cerebras

These models excel at intelligent search, file analysis, and complex workflows.

Real-World Use Cases

  • Researchers: Manage papers, notes, and research across multiple projects

  • Knowledge Workers: Keep your Obsidian vault, notes, and documents searchable and interactive

  • Teams: Organize shared workspaces for collaborative projects

  • Content Creators: Manage archives of articles, scripts, and reference materials

We are just starting

We'd love to hear what you think! Let us know how you're using Workspaces and what features you'd like to see next.

Cheers,

The Alter Team

Full Changelog

New Features & Enhancements

  • Workspace System: List, Search Files, Search Patterns and Read tools scoped to the workspace files and folder for security

  • File Management: Add files and folders to workspaces, handle large PDF files, and search across workspace contents

  • Topic Suggestions: Intelligent topic suggestions and conversation starters based on workspace content

  • Workspace Scoping: Scope tabs to workspace for better organization

  • Hub Workspace Picker: New workspace picker in toolbar for easy workspace switching

  • Open Files/Folders: Double-click to open folders and files in workspace view

  • Workspace & Tab Switching: Preserve tabs with state and unload after some times to preserve system memory

  • New Model: Cerebras GLM-4.7 at 1,000 tokens per second

Bug Fixes & Stability

  • Popover Behavior: Improved popover behavior in hub

  • Performance Optimizations: Fixed sidebar performance, input rendering performance, and multiple hangs/render performance issues

  • Client Restart: Fixed restarting clients with wrong type and bad camel case tool names

  • Hub Fixes: Fixed input model selection clear prefix

Videos on Alter