Apps
Apps
Apps are purpose-built environments that open in Windows. Each App owns its own entity types, its own UI, and its own intelligence. They are the surface layer of River — the daily-driver tools you actually click on.
What makes River Apps different from the apps on your desktop:
- Shared entity system — every App reads and writes to the same world model, so the AI can see across all of them.
- No app switching — Mail, Tasks, Docs, and Sheets all live in the same workspace, multiplayer, real time.
- AI is built in — every App's content is reasonable-over by SpaceChat and Agents.
- Built-in or custom — install any of the built-ins, or build your own with Custom Apps.
Why Apps live inside River#
Because Apps share the same entity system as everything else, the AI can see into them — tasks inform goals, emails inform priorities, calendar events inform decisions, contacts inform deal context. There's no integration shim between Apps; they were always speaking the same language.
This is the OS-level shift. In macOS, every app has its own private filesystem and the system can't reason across them. In River, everything lives in the same tree.
Built-in Apps#
| App | What it does |
|---|---|
| Email inbox with AI triage, smart folders, and one-click composition | |
| Tasks | Tasks with AI extraction, smart views, and shortcuts |
| Notes | Quick capture and long-form notes |
| Pages | Rich document editor (BlockNote) |
| Docs | Reference documents and knowledge bases |
| Sheets | Spreadsheets with formulas and live data |
| Contacts | People graph and stakeholder maps |
| Browser | In-workspace web browsing with clip-to-entity |
| Image Studio | AI image generation and editing |
| Video Studio | AI video pipeline — ingest, analyze, generate |
| Automations | Control center for Agents, Workflows, and Schedules |
| View, annotate, and extract from PDFs | |
| Transcripts | Audio and video transcription with speaker detection |
There are more, and the catalog grows with every release.
Opening Apps#
Apps open whenever you open an entity of the right type. Click an Email and the Mail App opens it. Click a Sheet and the Sheets App opens it. The right App for the entity is automatic.
You can also open an App directly:
- Cmd K → type the App name
- Click the App icon in the dock
- Ask SpaceChat: "open Tasks"
Custom Apps#
If none of the built-ins fits your workflow, build one. App Builder is River's AI-native IDE for creating full applications with custom entity types, UI, and tools.
→ See Custom Apps to start.
Tips#
- Pin the Apps you use daily to your dock for one-click access.
- Most Apps have AI menu actions — right-click any entity inside an App for the relevant AI moves.
- The fastest way to switch between Apps is Cmd K plus the first few letters of the App's name.