Frequently Asked Questions

HQ is an AI operating system for your work: a shared home for your team's knowledge, projects, and AI helpers, so the AI you work with actually knows your business and gets smarter over time. Full explanation: What is HQ?

No. Most everyday HQ users never touch code. You type plain-English requests and commands (like /prd or /startwork) into the HQ app, or into Claude Code or Codex, which are chat windows for AI work. The few unavoidably technical steps (like installation) are spelled out click-by-click in Installing HQ on macOS and Installing HQ on Windows.

These three get confused constantly, so here's the rule of thumb:

• /setup: sets up your HQ. Run it once, when you first install. It asks who you are and what you work on, then builds your personal workspace.
• /onboard: connects you to a company (a shared workspace for a business or team). Use it to create a new company or join an existing one.
• /accept <token>: a shortcut for joining via an invite link. If a teammate sent you a magic link, /accept redeems it. It's the "I got invited" version of /onboard.

So: /setup = you (once), /onboard = a company (create or join), /accept = join via invite.

Head to Your First Win, a guided first project you can finish in one sitting. Or run /tutorial for interactive lessons.

When you create a skill (a saved, repeatable workflow), it lands in one of two places depending on who it's for:

• Just for you: under personal/ in your HQ folder, your private overlay.
• For a company/team: under companies/{company-name}/, where teammates can get it via sync.

If you can't find one, run /search with the skill's name. For the full map of where things live, see Commands, Skills, and Workers and The HQ Mental Model.

The session pauses; nothing is deleted. When you come back, reopen Claude Code and continue the conversation, or start fresh with /startwork to reload your saved context. If the session had already hit an error or a context limit, /recover-session reconstructs it. Long-running background work is the exception. If an autonomous task was mid-flight, it stops with your laptop and resumes when you re-run it. See Sessions and Handoffs.

By design, each session starts fresh. Chat history is disposable, but files are forever. Anything worth keeping gets written to your HQ folder (via /handoff, /learn, or the work itself), and /startwork loads it back at the start of the next session. If you find yourself repeating an instruction, make it permanent with /learn. See Teaching HQ.

It's a ladder based on how baked the idea is: /idea captures a one-liner for later. /brainstorm fleshes out a fuzzy idea. /prd produces a standard project plan (PRD) and is right for about 90% of projects. /deep-plan is for big or strategic work. It does deeper research and a longer interview. Full walkthrough: From Idea to Shipped.

Image reads are limited by file size, not by how many images you send. Images over 2 MB are blocked.

Yes. Solo, offline HQ is fully supported. Everything lives in a folder on your machine, and no account or internet connection is required for core work. The cloud (HQ Cloud) is optional; you add it when you want backup across machines or team features like sharing and syncing. You can start solo and turn on cloud later without redoing anything.

No, and this is a hard rule, not a convention. Each company under companies/ is an isolated tenant: its knowledge, credentials, and files never mix with another company's, and HQ treats any cross-company leak as a serious bug. If you work with multiple businesses, each gets its own sealed compartment. Details: Companies, Projects, and Repos.

Usually one of three things: you're not signed in (/hq-login), the company isn't cloud-backed yet (/designate-team), or sync hasn't run since you shared (/hq-sync). Step-by-step fix: The "I'm Stuck" Guide.

Run /update-hq. It upgrades the core HQ scaffold to the latest release without touching your personal files, company data, or customizations. Those live in personal/ and companies/, which updates never overwrite.

On your machine, in your HQ folder. If you enable HQ Cloud, cloud-backed companies also sync to an encrypted vault so teammates and your other machines can access them. Secrets (API keys, passwords) are stored encrypted and are never pasted into chat. See the Secrets Guide.

No. Indigo doesn't use your data to train any AI models, and neither does any third party. HQ's cloud-side AI runs on AWS Bedrock (Claude models hosted inside AWS), which doesn't train on or retain the data sent to it. The local AI tools (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) run on your own machine using your own model-provider account. Your HQ files stay in your folder and, if you use cloud, in your company's encrypted vault. For the complete statement, see Indigo's security documentation.

Members of that company, according to its access rules. Your personal/ folder is yours alone. Champions can manage roles with /promote. See Team Rollout.

A plain chat assistant starts every conversation knowing nothing about you, and everything you teach it evaporates when the chat ends. HQ wraps the AI in a persistent, shared structure: your company's knowledge, policies, and past decisions are on disk, loaded into every session, and shared with your team. Ask ChatGPT to "write our weekly update" and you'll re-explain your business every time; ask HQ and it already knows your projects, your tone rules, and what happened last week. The AI is the engine. HQ is the memory, the filing system, and the team layer. More: What is HQ? and Teaching HQ.

No, not unless they're shared with them or kept in one of the company's shared folders. Owners and admins can see everything in the company. Details and safe setup for HR and payroll files: Permissions in HQ.

No. The free Starter plan works with your existing Claude Code setup, and humans are always free with no per-seat fees on any plan. Growing teams move to HQ Workforce ($500/mo flat per workspace, month to month) or Enterprise (custom pricing), which make people, secrets, storage, integrations, and deployments unlimited. A few usage-based add-ons apply on any plan: hosted cloud bots (billed per box from $100/mo each, starting with the first; no plan includes them, and bots you run yourself are free on Workforce), outposts ($100/mo each), and meeting notes (10 hours/month included on Workforce, then $1/hr). Current details: hqforwork.com/pricing.

Run /hq-bug feature with your question. Feature requests and questions both reach the team with your context attached. Or see Getting More Help.

Yes. Run /tutorial for ten hands-on lessons that use your real HQ.