Chat & AI assistant

What it is

Every team in Aden has a built-in chat. You can message your teammates in named threads, reply to individual messages, share files as cards, and @mention people or pieces of content (tracks, albums, tours, milestones, contacts) so everyone has the same context at a glance.

Inside any thread you can also talk to Aden AI: type @AI to route a message to the assistant. It knows your team's data and can look up tracks, show milestones, list collaborators, or help plan a release without you leaving the conversation.

Organisations get their own chat too: open Chat in the organisation sidebar to message the org's members and the members of every team connected to the organisation: including chats shared with the whole organisation or with a whole connected team.

Using it

Open chat. Click the chat icon in the sidebar. The left panel lists your threads; the right panel shows the conversation.

Suggestions from what people ask. When a message from someone else asks for something, a row of chips above the composer offers the step: "send the new version of Summer Nights" offers that track, "send over a playlist" makes a playlist of the team's newest tracks and writes its link, "where do I upload the stems?" makes an upload link. Hover a message and press the sparkle for the same steps for that message alone. Each writes into the composer, so you read it before sending. The phrases are the same ones the desktop inbox reads (@aden/chat/smart/message-intents), no AI.

Music people post. A SoundCloud, Dropbox, Drive, OneDrive or Suno link, or a direct audio file, gets a card under the message with its player, a like (green) and pass (red) thumb and 1-5 stars. The first one you set makes it one of the team's demos, with who posted it; pressing the active thumb again takes it back to undecided.

# tabs. The # box has tabs for each kind it found (tracks, albums, playlists and the rest) next to All.

Start from your dashboard. Both the personal dashboard and each team dashboard have a chat box at the top. Type your question, pick who can see it Just me (a private chat where the AI assistant answers) or one of your teams (an open chat everyone on that team can see): and send. Your message shows straight away and you land on the chat page with the conversation already created and the answer streaming in. Started from a team dashboard, the chat already knows which team you're asking about, so questions about tracks, milestones, or releases don't need extra context. Don't want the box? Hide it from Customize like any other dashboard widget.

Message someone directly. Hover any member's name or avatar anywhere in Aden and pick Send a message on their card. The chat panel opens right there with your conversation, or a new one if you don't have one yet, without leaving the page you're on.

Message someone you haven't worked with. Search finds everyone on Aden by name, whether or not you share a team. If you have never worked together, the chat arrives as a request: it sits in their Requests group with your first message visible, raises no unread badge, and they choose Accept, Decline, or Decline and block. Replying accepts it. You see nothing of theirs beyond their name and avatar, and they see nothing of yours: search never returns an email or any other contact detail, in either direction.

Start a new thread. Click New thread, give it a name, and add people: search by name under Everyone on Aden. Anyone you have not worked with is marked Sent as a request in the list, so you know before you send. Threads can be team-scoped (only your team) or cross-team.

Don't want to be findable. Account → Privacy → Findable by name turns you off in people search. People you already share a team, an organisation or a track credit with still find you everywhere they did before; strangers don't find you at all. The same switch is on mobile, under the privacy screen.

Send a message. Type in the composer and press Enter. Attach files by clicking the paperclip or dragging them in. Reply to a specific message with the reply button on hover.

@mention someone or something. Type @ and start typing. The picker shows people from across all the teams you can access (every team you're a member of plus the teams you reach through an organisation, including their members and the collaborators you've worked with), not just the current team. Type # to reference content: it lists tracks from all your accessible teams, plus the active team's albums, playlists, tours, events, milestones, and contacts. # opens a search box grouped by kind (tracks, albums, playlists, …). The search matches names and a track's status too. Backspace on an empty search removes the #, Esc keeps it. Picking an entity embeds a rich card and feeds its details to the AI if the message is addressed to it.

Load a skill. Type $ to search your team's skills in the same box. Once a message in the chat names $<skill>, the AI follows that skill for the rest of the chat, until you clear the AI context.

Readable width. Messages and the composer sit in a centered column. Pick Full width in the chat's ... menu to stretch them; the choice is saved in this browser.

Talk to the AI. Two ways. Flip the AI toggle in the composer footer (bottom-left, next to the model selector) to bring Aden AI into the loop while it's on, every message you send is answered by the assistant, no @AI needed. Or, one message at a time, type @AI (or @all to CC the whole thread plus the AI). Typing @AI also lights the toggle. The assistant replies in-thread with formatted text, tables, and sometimes rich cards. Use the thumbs-up / thumbs-down on any AI reply to rate the response. Helpful for the team to flag issues.

Reach out to contacts. Ask the assistant to email people from your CRM "who can I contact for the show and draft a message", "reach out to the promoters about Friday". It finds the right contacts, writes a draft, and shows an Outreach card listing everyone it'll email plus the message. Nothing sends until you click Send outreach: then each contact gets their own email under your team's name.

See everyone's local time. Chat shows the current local time of the people you're talking to, relative to yours. The members panel shows a live clock next to each person; hover it, or a member's avatar on a thread row, an author's name on a message, or an @mention, to see their current time, timezone, and how far ahead of or behind you they are.

Pin a thread. Hover the thread name in the sidebar and click the pin icon. Pinned threads stay at the top.

Mute a chat. Open the thread's ⋯ menu and pick Mute. The chat keeps receiving messages, but it stops notifying you, stops showing an unread dot, and stops counting toward the Chat badge in the sidebar. A speaker-off icon marks muted threads. Unmute from the same menu.

Mute or block a person. Hover anyone's name or avatar and pick Mute notifications (you stop being notified about them, their messages still show) or Block in chat. Blocking is account-wide: the same block the Report & block controls use, so their messages are hidden from you, they can't start a chat with you, and you can't add them to yours. Review and lift both under Account → Chat.

Invite someone outside the team. Use the invite attachment. The action sends an email and creates an invite card visible in the thread, tracking pending → sent → accepted / declined.