At a glance

The workspace is a clean white surface with Sonderr blue interaction accents and Sonderr branding throughout. The persistent sidebar holds your sessions, the Plugin Hub, Sonderr Studios and runtime status. The center is the task surface with the composer underneath; recent sessions sit one click away. Tool calls stream into the chat as collapsed activity blocks in real time and are persisted with the session — reopening a task replays everything.

The four task modes

Mode	What it can do
Ask	Read-only. File-write, patch and project-check schemas are omitted entirely — Ask cannot mutate your workspace, period.
Plan	Mutation-limited. Maps the repo, proposes a strategy and sequences the work before anything is touched.
Build	Handles real changes. New chats start in Build; edits land as reviewable diffs and commands run under your chosen access level.
Vision	Image understanding — OCR, screenshots, charts, error debugging — plus edit_image for generation and editing. Model discovery tags vision-capable models and the picker filters accordingly.

Task mode and Tools & Access are separate controls. Project checks and shell commands require Full PC access plus an explicit request in your current message — a stale call, negated instruction or how-to question cannot silently authorize an action, and Sonderr explains the actual missing boundary instead of pretending it can switch modes for you.

Composer shortcuts

Six slashes cover the most useful workflows: /audit, /health, /plan, /verify, /security and /docs. Short factual questions and greetings stay concise; substantive workspace requests automatically get the tools and tracking they need.

Artifacts — output you can actually use

When the model finishes a deliverable it calls present_file, and the chat renders a download card served by the sandboxed local API. Clicking the card opens the artifact panel: a side column (full-screen on mobile) with a live preview body — rendered markdown, syntax-styled code, pretty-printed JSON, CSV/TSV as a real table, full-bleed images on a checkerboard, and a download-first state for binaries like PDF/ZIP. Copy and download actions sit right in the header; ESC closes.

Uploads in every direction

The + menu has Upload from device; files are stored under .sonderr/uploads/<session>/ with name de-duplication and a 20 MB cap. Text files attach as context, images switch Sonderr into Vision mode automatically. Clipboard paste and drag & drop work too — a drop overlay confirms the zone, and binaries attach as readable references instead of garbled context.

Live task lists

Multi-step work gets a visible task list created and maintained with todo_write: one in_progress item at a time, marked completed the moment each step is verified. The UI renders a live card with a progress bar, per-item status icons and priority badges, streamed over SSE and replayed when the task reopens.

Long-running work that survives

Substantial Build work checkpoints its goal, milestone, verified evidence and exact next action. Long provider conversations are automatically compacted while carrying forward the original request and latest checkpoint. The local process can continue checkpointed work after the browser closes; if Sonderr itself exits, the next launch offers Resume interrupted task. Workload targets are tiered — from 10–60 second jobs up to 6–30 hour undertakings — and idle time never counts toward them.

Sonderr Studios & the Plugin Hub

Studios opens from the sidebar as a full-page workspace for websites, browser apps, general projects and more. Projects persist as distinct sessions with validated milestone boards; Website and App projects include an isolated local preview with desktop/mobile controls. Hosting and publishing remain separate steps. The Plugin Hub lists plugin summaries with release metadata — choose Use this plugin to enable one for the current chat; Sites and Code Review workflows come with focused instructions included only when enabled.

Collaboration rooms

Rooms keep the lead and up to three read-only workers inside the same chat — live via Alt+5 — with shared findings, help and risk signals, peer review, separate AI and human poll votes, and saved-room recovery. Worker identities are labeled as fictional AI personas, and their assessments remain unverified evidence.

Bounded direct email

The optional email settings use SMTP without an MCP connector: Brevo, Mailgun or SendGrid presets fill host and port, you provide a verified sender and credential, and every message passes the email-safety skill plus a visible confirmation card. Gmail OAuth is available in the same panel. Sends are rate-limited — one per second, ten recipients per message, one hundred per hour — and credentials stay in ~/.sonderr/.env with restrictive permissions.