Quick Start

This guide takes you from installing The One to your first matter: the main assistant hands it to a working group, and you follow the work on its board.

1. Install and sign in

Download The One for macOS (Apple Silicon, macOS 15 or later) or Windows from the download page, install it and sign in with your The Zeroth account. Until a model is set up, the app opens Get started (Start in the sidebar), which walks you through the next steps.

The app opens in the light preset, Xuan Paper, while the screenshots in these docs use the dark preset, Ink Night; you choose the look in Settings › General › Appearance.

2. Connect a model service

The main assistant and the working groups work with a model, so this comes first.

• With The One membership, the official connection is already there: its card shows your tier and how much usage is left.
• Without a membership, the card offers Become a member, which opens the console. Subscribe there, then come back and choose I have subscribed, refresh.
• Or connect your own: Sign in with ChatGPT uses the Codex allowance of your ChatGPT plan, or add an API key for OpenAI, Anthropic or Gemini. Other services connects a service with an OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible API, including models on your own computer such as Ollama or LM Studio.

Models and Pricing compares the options, and API configuration covers every connection type.

3. Pick a default model

Pick the model that the main assistant, and every Agent that names no model of its own, works with. You can change it any time from the model button under the main assistant's composer or in Settings › Models and sign-in › Default model, where you can also keep several model presets. See Models.

4. Check the Space's models (only when needed)

Agents in a Space can name a model or a connection of their own, for example in a Space someone shared with you. When one of them cannot be reached on your computer, Get started adds this step and lists them, with two ways out: Use the default model for those Agents, or connect the service they name.

5. Set up your own Space (recommended)

You start in the official Space. It is read-only: its working-group templates, roles and Skills are kept by The One and updated with new versions, so whatever the main assistant and the evolution lab find to improve stays a proposal there. Choose Copy the official Space and use it to work in a Space of your own, where their changes take effect and you can edit anything yourself. The cost is that later updates to the official Space do not reach your copy by themselves. See Definition Spaces.

6. Tell the main assistant the first thing

The last step, Ready to go, names the three places you need: the Main assistant, Needs you and the Morning report. The main assistant is Conversation in the sidebar; what needs you waits in its conversation too, and each day's greeting there opens the morning report. Type what you want done and choose Give it to the main assistant, or Look at the home page first.

What happens next

• The main assistant answers right away. When the request is bigger than one answer, it opens a matter, which appears under Matters in the sidebar, and hands the work to a working group in the same step.
• The matter's board fills as the group works: its questions and deliveries arrive as cards. Those that wait for you also show in the conversation, as a card under the line that announces them, and in Needs you; the main assistant answers the questions it can settle from what you already told it.
• When the group delivers, the main assistant checks the delivery against what you asked for and tells you the conclusion first. Judge it with Accept, Rework (your words go back to the group) or Give up.
• The next day, the main assistant greets you in the conversation with what happened since you last looked. Open the morning report shows the Morning report: what was delivered, what still waits for you and what it cost.

Read on: The main assistant, Matters and boards and Working groups.