The Project Overview
Opening a project from the selector, the registry or a Heimdall button; what the overview shows: the key, status and health, the lifecycle strip, the Heimdall suggests rail, the client, dates, leads, budget, description and recent activity; and what a client guest sees of it.
By the end of this page you will know the three ways into a project, what the overview tells you at a glance, how to have Heimdall research the project's domain from the rail under the lifecycle, how the sidebar changes while a project is open, and which parts of the page a client guest is shown.
A project's overview is its home: the record the registry holds, laid out to be read rather than edited, with the project's place in its lifecycle drawn across the top and the latest changes under it at the bottom. Every page that belongs to the project (its components, environments, people, planning record, board, tests, releases and incidents, as those modules arrive) hangs off the same sidebar menu that appears when the overview opens.
Before you begin
| You want to | You need |
|---|---|
| Open a project | To be able to see it: a staff member sees every project of their team shared with the whole team, plus the members-only projects they were added to; a guest sees the projects they were invited to. |
| Change what the overview shows | project:update on the project, through the registry's editor. The overview itself writes nothing. |
A project that is hidden from you answers 404 wherever its address is typed, so a project you are not allowed to see looks like one that does not exist.
Open a project
Three doors lead to the overview, and they all end on the same address, /projects/<id>:
- The project selector at the top of the sidebar lists every live project you may see, each with its initials, its name and its key, and a dot in the colour of its health. Type to search; choose one and the overview opens. Clear the selector to return to the dashboard. Archived projects are not offered here; reach them from the registry.
- The registry opens a project with Open Project in a row's menu, or with the Open Project button at the foot of a project's detail flyout.
- Heimdall answers a question about a project with a button named after it ("View Customer Portal") that opens the overview; a question about several projects gets Open the projects instead, which opens the registry.
The selector refreshes itself when a project is created, renamed, archived or deleted elsewhere, so a project a colleague added a minute ago is in the list without a reload.
Read the overview
The page opens with the project's name and tagline. Under them:
- The badges: the key (
CRM), the lifecycle status, the health, the methodology and, for staff, the visibility (whole team or members only). - The lifecycle strip: the six steps a project passes through, Discovery, Planning, In development, In testing, Live and Maintenance, with the steps behind the project ticked, the current one highlighted and the rest ahead. A project On hold or Archived stands on no step; its status badge says so.
- Heimdall suggests (staff only): the rail where Heimdall researches the project's domain and leaves notes and suggestions; the next step walks through it.
- Client: the organisation the project is done for, with its status and industry, and for staff the primary contact. An internal project says so instead.
- Dates: when the project starts, when it is due to launch and when it launched.
- Leads (staff only): the project manager, business analyst, lead developer and QA lead, or Unassigned where nobody holds the role yet.
- Budget (staff only): the hours agreed with the client, which time logs and timesheets report against once work is tracked, or No budget agreed.
- Description: the paragraph the registry holds, rendered as written.
- Recent Activity (staff only): the newest changes recorded anywhere in the project, newest first, with who made each and where it came from, and Load more for the older ones.
Open in registry at the top right opens the registry with this project's detail flyout already showing, from where Edit, Move to, Archive and the rest are one press away. The overview itself changes nothing: every write to a project goes through the registry, so the rules and the history there are the only ones.
While the project's setup is still open and you may change the project, a reminder above the lifecycle counts the steps saved, and Continue Setup opens the intake wizard at the first step still open. Finishing the wizard takes the reminder away.
Ask Heimdall about the domain
Between the lifecycle strip and the cards, staff who may see the project's imports find the Heimdall suggests rail. On a project never researched it explains itself in a sentence and offers Research the domain. Press it and Heimdall reads the web for what this kind of product needs: the features clients expect, the laws and standards that apply in the client's country and industry, the integrations the client will assume, the baselines of the market, and the security and accessibility expectations the project will be held to. The ask is answered at once with a toast; the run is worked on the queue as you, the badge beside the heading moves from Queued to Researching, and the rail refreshes itself every few seconds until the run is Ready or Failed. One run at a time: a second press while one is open is refused with a toast.
When the run is ready the rail shows, top to bottom:
- Check the record runs Heimdall's improvement sweep now: it reads the record for a requirement without a measure, a story without a negative criterion, a rule without an example, an entity without an owner and a risk without a mitigation, and leaves one card per gap under Waiting for you, each with Open to the record. It calls no model.
- Who asked and when, from the newest run, and Research again to run it once more. A later run adds to the earlier ones: ideas the project already holds or dismissed are left out of its answer, so pressing it after the record grew is cheap and useful, pressing it on an unchanged project mostly repeats the cost.
- Waiting for you: a card per suggestion still undecided, two to a row. Each names its kind (Research for a fact the project must honour, Improvement for a gap in the record), how sure Heimdall is, the title, a summary, the one-line reason and the pages it read, each a link that opens in a new tab. People who may decide imports see Keep and Dismiss on the card: Keep holds the note on the project for everyone to read; Dismiss drops it and tells Heimdall never to propose it again. Neither writes a record; a kept note is something to act on through the editors or the brief import.
- What Heimdall learned: the notes of the newest finished run, one row per topic, folded; open a row for the paragraphs and the sources.
- Kept: the suggestions people kept, newest first, with who kept each.
A run that failed says why in the rail (the model did not answer, the answer could not be read, the budget had no room, or the person who asked is gone) and offers Research again; nothing was written and nothing was charged. A project whose assists are off under Settings → AI shows the rail with what earlier runs left and without the ask. How the researcher thinks, what it is told and what a run costs is on the Heimdall research page.
The sidebar while a project is open
Opening a project swaps the sidebar's menu. The Selected Project group starts with Project Overview, then Setup while the intake wizard is still open, badged with the steps saved and shown only to people who may change the project, then Components, Environments, People (the stakeholders and personas tabs), Dictionary (the glossary and data entities tabs), Designs and Code (the repositories tab), each badged with how many you may see (a guest is shown the environments, the people, the approved dictionary and the designs, and neither the components nor the code), then Settings for the people who may change the project, and each later module adds its own entry as it lands: the planning record, the board, tests, releases and maintenance. Above the notifications bell, Back to Dashboard returns to the overview of your work across every project; the selector stays where it is, showing the project you are in, and still switches to another in one choice.
Without a project the menu shows Dashboard, Projects (badged with the number of live projects you may see) and Clients (badged with your team's live clients).
What a guest sees
A client guest invited to the project sees the same page without its internal parts: the badges except the visibility, the lifecycle strip, the client's name, status and industry without the contact, the dates and the description. The leads, the budget, the activity and the Heimdall suggests rail are not shown, and the selector and menu offer only the projects the guest was invited to.
What happens next
The overview itself writes nothing: it reads the same row the registry writes, so a status moved
or a lead assigned there shows here on the next visit, and the activity card records it as soon as
it happens. The Heimdall suggests rail is the exception. Asking for research emits
research.started, and the queue follows with research.ready (the counts of notes and
suggestions) or research.failed (the reason). Keeping a suggestion emits
import.suggestion_accepted and dismissing one import.suggestion_rejected, the same events a
brief import's decisions emit, with no batch named. Nobody is notified
of any of them; the rail is where the answer lands.
Heimdall on this page
Heimdall panel carries the open project as its context, so a question needs no key:
- "Where does this project stand?"
- "Who leads this project and when is it due?"
- "Summarise what changed on this project this week."
The answers come from get_project and get_activity_log, and the button under an answer opens the
page it read.
From the API and MCP
Retrieve a project
The same record the overview shows, as JSON, with the client and the leads.
get_project
The project by id or key, for an agent that needs its status, leads, dates and settings.
get_activity_log
What the activity card lists, filtered to the project.
Research a project's domain
What Research the domain does, over REST: a run queued and announced with 202.
Accept a suggestion
What Keep does, over REST; Dismiss is the reject endpoint beside it.
The research runs have no MCP tool yet: an agent reads the notes through the REST endpoint.
Permissions
| Action | Permission |
|---|---|
| Open the overview | None beyond seeing the project; every default role sees the team's shared projects |
| Open a members-only project | A membership row on the project, or owning the team |
| See the leads, budget, contact and activity | To be staff; a guest is never shown them |
| See the Heimdall suggests rail | import:view-any, as staff; a guest is never shown it |
| Research the domain, or check the record | import:create, with the project's assists on |
| Keep or dismiss a suggestion | import:update |
| Change anything shown | project:update, through the registry |
Frequently asked
Why does the selector not show a project I know exists? It lists live projects you may see. An archived project is left out on purpose; find it in the registry with the Archived switch on, restore it there if it should be worked on again. A project of another team, or a members-only project you were not added to, is not yours to see.
Can I edit the description or move the status here? Not on this page. Press Open in registry and use the flyout's controls; the registry is the one place projects are changed, so its validation and its history stay complete.
The lifecycle shows every step ahead. Is that a bug? No. A project On hold or Archived is paused rather than at a step; the status badge shows which, and restoring or moving the project puts it back on the path.
I dismissed a suggestion by mistake. Can I get it back? No. A dismissal is a decision Heimdall is told to honour on every later run, and decisions are never undone. Write what the note proposed yourself, through the record's own editor or the brief import, if it turns out to matter.
Why did the second run leave fewer suggestions than the first? Because the first run's ideas, kept, pending or dismissed, are left out of every later answer, and so are the titles the record now holds. A second run on an unchanged project is mostly new notes and few new suggestions.
Why is the activity card empty on a new project? It lists the changes recorded under the project. A project created a moment ago has its creation entry and nothing else until something under it changes.
Related
- The registry — where projects are created, edited, moved, archived and deleted
- Clients — the organisations projects are done for
- Status reference — every status on the lifecycle strip and what moves a project into it
- Activity log — the record behind the activity card
- Heimdall panel — the buttons that open a project from an answer
- Heimdall research — what the researcher is told, how it answers and what a run costs
- Improvement sweep — the five gaps Check the record looks for, and why a card is never proposed twice
- Brief import — the review queue the kept and dismissed notes share their shape with
How is this guide?
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The Intake Wizard
Start a project from a client, a name and a paragraph, then add components, environments, stakeholders and personas step by step, resuming any time.
Components
The Components page of a project: the web app, the API, the mobile apps and the services it is made of, each with a slug, a kind, a tech stack and an owner; adding, editing, archiving, restoring and deleting them.