Teams

A team is a second library that several people share: the same papers, the same Project, the same Docs, a transcript of a chat worth passing on, and a task board that says who does what. Your own library stays yours. A team sits beside it, and you switch between the two.

What a team is

A team lives in the iCloud account of the person who created it, as one shared area in that account's ForeverLM storage. Members receive it through Apple's iCloud sharing, the same mechanism Notes and Pages use to share a document. ForeverLM keeps no directory of teams and no server copy of anyone's content.

Three consequences follow:

• Storage counts against the creator's iCloud. Members' quotas are untouched no matter how many papers they share into the team.
• Regular Apple Accounts are all that is needed. Managed Apple Accounts are not required. An organization that turns off iCloud sharing on its managed accounts keeps those members out; that is the organization's policy, not ForeverLM's.
• The roster is Apple's participant list. Who is in the team and what each person may do is read from the share, not from anything ForeverLM stores.

Creating a team and inviting people

Open Settings → Account → Team on the Mac and choose Create Team. Give it a name. The team appears in the library switcher at once, empty.

Manage Members opens Apple's sharing sheet. Invite people by email address or phone number, and choose whether they may edit or only view. Apple sends the invitation; the person accepts it on a Mac running ForeverLM and the team appears in their switcher. You can change a member's access or remove them from the same sheet at any time, and rename the team from the same pane.

Switching libraries

Click your name at the bottom of the navigation rail. The account menu opens with Library at the top: My Library, then each team by name, then New Team… and Manage Teams…. While a team is open, a badge beside your name carries the team's name (with a lock when you can only view it), so the rail always says whose library is on screen. Switching reloads Sources, Projects, Docs and Chats for that library; everything else in the Studio works as before. A team's rows never sit beside your own rows, and a team badge marks a row whose home is a team wherever one is shown.

Anything you create while a team is open belongs to the team from the start: a URL you add, a Project you make, a Doc you write.

Sharing into a team

Sharing copies. It never moves.

Every source row, Project row and Project page, Doc menu and chat row in My Library has a Share with Team ▸ item listing the teams you may write into. Choosing one makes a copy in the team's library under a team identity. The original stays exactly where it was, and stays yours.

• Sources. A paper shared by two members is one team record, not two, because a team source's identity is derived from the team and the source's URL rather than from who shared it. Sharing the same source again updates the team's copy rather than adding a second one. A paper's PDF or a book's file travels with the copy, so deleting the original from your library never takes the team's copy away. A book, course, meeting series or podcast is shared one item at a time; the collection itself does not travel.
• Projects. The Project's instructions, research questions and Goals are copied, and you choose whether its sources and Docs come along. Chats you had in the Project stay yours; share a transcript separately if the team should read it.
• Docs. A Doc shared with a team needs no publishing and no password. The team's copy syncs into every member's ForeverLM, and members open it there like a Doc of their own. Publishing to foreverlm.com remains the route for people outside the team, and the two actions sit apart in the menu.
• Chats. A chat shared with a team is a read-only transcript. See In-App Chat for what travels and what is stripped.

Team Projects and the task board

Every Project page has a Tasks section. In a team Project the board is the team's: every member sees the same tasks.

A task has a title, notes, a status (To do, In progress, Done), an optional due date, and can point at the source or Doc it is about. In a team Project a task can be assigned to a member from the roster. The assignment survives the roster changing: a task still shows who it belonged to after that person has left the team. The Project inspector summarizes how many tasks are open and how many are yours.

Tasks also exist on your own Projects, without assignment.

An AI assistant connected over MCP can work the same board with list_project_tasks, create_project_task, update_project_task and delete_project_task, and can create teams and share into them with list_teams, create_team and share_with_team. These tools run on the Mac only; see the MCP Tools Reference.

What stays private

A team shares material, not your progress through it. The following never enter a team record:

• where you got to in a paper, whether you have read it, and how deeply you review it;
• what you completed in a team Project and your quiz history there;
• your highlights, memory items and review results;
• your Schedule.

Two members reading the same team paper each keep their own place in it. Your own chats about a team Project remain yours; only a transcript you share reaches the team.

Read-only members

A member the owner gave view access sees the team's library and its task boards but cannot change them. The controls are disabled, and any change that would land in a read-only team is refused rather than queued.

Leaving and deleting a team

Leave Team (a member) removes the team from your Macs. Delete Team (the owner) removes it for everyone. In both cases only the team's copies go. Everything anyone shared into the team is still in their own library, exactly as it was before they shared it.

If the owner removes you, the team disappears from your switcher and the Studio returns to My Library.

Limits in this release

• iPhone shows only My Library. Team libraries are not visible on the phone yet, and nothing the phone syncs changes shape.
• Team creation and member management happen on the Mac. The Web Library can switch to a team, read its content and work its task boards, but cannot create a team or manage its members.
• Chats are shared as transcripts. There is no live multi-person chat; collaboration on prose is a Doc.
• Nothing moves back out. There is no unshare. To remove something from a team, delete the team's copy in the team's library; the original is unaffected.
• Audio narration is not shared. Each member's Mac generates its own Read Aloud audio for a team copy.