Get Started
River's documentation
River is a workspace where your work, your context, and your AI live together. It's designed to feel like an operating system, not an app — because work today is too big for any single app to hold.
Why River exists#
Modern knowledge workers have three computers.
The first is the file computer — macOS or Windows, managing folders, apps, and storage. It has no idea what the files mean.
The second is the communication computer — email, Slack, calendar. It knows who you talked to, but not what you decided.
The third is the AI computer — a chat window. It has context for about ten minutes.
These three systems don't talk to each other. Every morning you reconstruct your own context from scratch. River collapses that stack into one workspace where the AI is part of the substrate, not a sidebar.
How it's structured — the six layers#
Everything in River fits into one of six layers, each one solving a problem the modern stack leaves broken:
- The Home — Entities, Groups, the Entity System (where everything lives)
- The Surface — Spaces, Windows, Apps (where you work)
- The Senses — Integrations, Browser Extension, Desktop App (how the world gets in)
- The Nervous System — Event Stream (what happens, recorded in real time)
- The Intelligence — Agents, Workflows, Skills, Signal Intelligence (what works for you)
- The Boundary — Dataspaces (who sees and collaborates)
Read How River Works for the full mental model.
What this guide covers#
| Section | What's inside |
|---|---|
| Get Started | Installing, first conversation, first entity, first Agent |
| Foundations | The mental model and the primitives — Entities, Spaces, Events |
| River AI | SpaceChat, the three modes, tools, local models |
| Automation | Agents, Workflows, Skills, Schedules, Jobs |
| Apps | The built-in surfaces — Mail, Tasks, Docs, Sheets, and more |
| Senses & Connections | Integrations, browser extension, desktop & computer use |
| Customizing River | Profile, custom views, custom apps, space templates |
| Collaboration | Orgs, dataspaces, sharing, multiplayer |
| Privacy & Local AI | What stays local, self-hosted, Ollama |
| Teams & Enterprise | Team Dataspaces, admin, billing |
If you read in order, the second section (Foundations) is the most important. Everything else is reference.
River's core promise#
River is designed to be:
- Persistent — your work has continuity across sessions, devices, and even reboots
- Structured — every artifact has a permanent home in the entity system
- Agentic — AI can work with you and for you, not only on demand
- Collaborative — humans and AI live in the same shared world model
Where to next#
- New to River? Continue to Quickstart.
- Want the conceptual model first? Read How River Works.
- Ready to build? Try Building an Agent.