Daimond Daimond Guide

Email, Web & files

The sources a daimon works from: mail you can read and answer, web pages it can show or drive, files it can read and write, and the tools it does the work with.

Email

The Email panel lives in the dock and holds your mailboxes and what is in them. A browser cannot open a mail connection on its own, so Daimond connects through a gateway, which hands back the raw message and forgets your credential. Your mail is written into the Workspace as ordinary files, so the agent's file tools already read it.

The Email panel: the mailboxes at the top and a list of messages below, with buttons to write, add a mailbox and sync.
The Email panel. Its header buttons write a message, add a mailbox, and sync.

Adding a mailbox

Choose + (add a mailbox) in the Email panel header. Type your address and Daimond guesses the server settings for common providers; every field stays editable, because a guess is not a fact. Most providers want an app password (a single-purpose password you generate in your mail account's security settings) and not your account password. The panel says where to find it for your provider.

Your mail credential is stored on this device, wrapped under your passphrase. It is handed to the gateway only for a single sync, held for one conversation with your mail server, and then forgotten. Daimond stores no mail on any server and never sees your account password.

Reading and syncing

Choose (sync now) to fetch what has arrived. A sync asks only for messages newer than the last one held, so it stays quick. Click a message to open it onto the stage, beside the chat, so you can ask the daimon about it while you read.

Writing a message

Choose (write a message) to open the Compose panel on the stage. Fill in From, To, an optional Cc, a Subject and the body; attach files with Attach…; keep a draft with Save draft. Nothing sends by itself.

Only you can send mail. The Send button is the one thing in Daimond that puts mail on the wire, and only a person can press it. The daimon can draft a message beside you, but it cannot send it.

The Web panel

Ask Daimond to open a web page (“show me the Rust ownership chapter”) or paste a link into the chat. Three ways it can put a page on the stage, and which works depends on the site.

The Web panel showing a page on the stage, with back, reload and open-in-a-tab controls in its header.
The Web panel. A page shown here sits beside the chat, so the daimon can be asked about it.

Show it

The page appears in the panel. Most sites refuse to be embedded (the web's clickjacking defence, the same in every browser), so this works only for the minority that allow it.

Read it

Daimond fetches the page and reads its text, so it works when showing does not. It reads the words, not pictures or anything drawn by JavaScript, and you do not see the page. Daimond does.

Drive it

With Daimond Hands, a browser add-on, Daimond opens a real page in a real tab, signed in as you, and works it while you watch. This is the only way to work a live, logged-in site.

Signing in stays yours. When you sign in on a driven page, Daimond stops watching entirely (no text, no picture, no keystrokes) and never sees your password. You hand the wheel back with Resume Daimond, and that button is in the browser tab, not in Daimond, so a page can never take the wheel from you.

The Workspace

The Workspace panel, in the dock, is your files as an ordinary tree of folders. This is where the agent reads and writes: uploads, mail, documents and anything it produces all live here.

With a Diamond open, the panel shows either everything here or only the files that Diamond holds. The 📎 on every row attaches one to whatever is in focus; Chats & Diamonds sets out what attaching does, what a daimon may then open, and what that protects you from.

Three ways to get a file in

Getting a file into the workspace and attaching it to a Diamond are separate acts. There are three ways in, and each is for a different case:

An agent can also write a file where it is allowed to, and mail arrives here as ordinary files.

The Workspace panel: three chips reading Browser, Machine and Cloud, buttons to import a folder or save a copy, and a file tree in which one file is marked as being in cloud storage and another is pinned.
The Workspace. The chips name where the workspace lives; below them, interviews.txt is in cloud storage rather than on this device, and report-draft.txt is pinned so it is always kept here.

Working with files

The Workspace header carries buttons: New file, New folder, Upload files, Parent folder, Refresh. Under them a breadcrumb names every folder above the one you are in, each clickable, so a folder three deep is never a dead end. A filter box narrows a long list, and searches from where you are downward rather than stopping at the current folder.

Below the tree, System opens Daimond's own files: the store the Diamonds themselves live in. They are kept in the browser rather than in the folder you have open, and they travel between your devices. The tree above deliberately leaves them out, since a delete cross beside diamonds/ would take every Diamond you have.

Where a workspace lives

Three chips at the top of the panel name the places a workspace involves. Clicking one opens that place's controls.

Browser

This browser's own private storage, on your device and reachable by nothing outside Daimond. It is where a workspace lives unless you say otherwise. Its size is whatever the browser grants, which on an iPhone is not much, and a browser may clear it without warning.

Machine

A real folder on this computer's disk. The agent works in it directly, so the same files are in your own file manager, and it is roomier than what a browser grants. But it stays on that one computer, never travelling to your other devices, and only a Chromium-based browser can open one.

The folder is the whole of what the agent can see. Nothing above it and nothing outside it is visible to Daimond. Clicking the chip while the agent is working there says so, and offers Forget this folder to stop Daimond holding a record of it.

Cloud

Not a third place to work but where the workspace is kept, which is what lets it be far larger than any one device holds. Its chip opens a view of what is stored, what is not on this device, a Free up space button and a Credits button.

The first two are alternatives, the agent working in one or the other. The third is not an alternative but where the bytes are kept. The admin panel's storage rows show how much space each is using.

What is kept in cloud storage is encrypted before it leaves, as a sync parcel is, so we hold bytes we cannot read.

Held, in cloud storage, or pinned

A file is in one of three states, and the tree shows which:

As the browser's storage fills, the files longest unused are freed back to cloud storage on their own; a pinned file never is.

Freeing a file is not deleting it. It stays in cloud storage, the tree still lists it, and it comes back when it is asked for. Only a deliberate delete removes a file.

Any kind of file

Any file is stored and travels between your devices, up to a gigabyte each. Opening one that is not text shows its size and a download button instead of trying to display it.

Moving files in and out

Two buttons sit beside the chips. Import a folder… copies a folder from this computer in, after which it syncs and is stored like everything else. Save a copy… writes the workspace out to a folder on this computer, and says how many cloud-only files it left behind rather than fetching them. Neither changes where the agent is working, and both need a Chromium-based browser.

While the agent is working in a real folder a third button appears, Change folder…, and it is the only control that opens a folder picker. Moving between Browser and Machine does not: Daimond remembers the folder you last used, so going back is one click on the chip.

What the agent may fetch

When the agent needs a file that is in cloud storage, it is told so plainly and has to fetch it deliberately. Nothing is downloaded quietly behind a read: a download can be large and, once storage is priced, costs you money. A cap limits how much the agent may bring down on its own initiative, after which it comes back and asks.

What cloud storage costs

Not a subscription. Like everything else leaving the browser it is paid for from credits, and the one-time Pro unlock stays one-time. At present it is free and unmetered, until it can be sold properly.

If a storage charge ever cannot be covered, nothing is deleted straight away. Reading and downloading stay free for six months, so everything can be retrieved, and only then is the paid overflow removed. The free working set never is.

Tools

Open the Tools · N of M row in the admin panel to see what Daimond can do. It is called Tools, not Upgrades, because most of what it lists is free and already yours.

The Tools panel listing the built-in tools the agent can use and the unlockable tools with their prices.
The Tools panel: the built-ins you already have, and the unlockable tools with their prices.

Two kinds of tool appear:

To add one, choose it and confirm; the cost is drawn from your credits, and once unlocked it stays available.