MindMax Agent
Not a chat tab. An assistant that works inside your documents.
Any assistant can answer a question. The trouble starts when the work takes twenty steps and you become the thing holding it together. This one sees what you have open — the document, the draft, the folder around them — so you can ask about one paragraph without explaining anything, or hand over a job that takes all evening and go and do something else.
The same job, without you carrying it between turns
In a chat window you are the one who remembers which chapter you were on, pastes the last answer into the next prompt and notices that the terminology drifted around page ninety. Here that bookkeeping is the assistant's job.
- Paste the chapter in and explain what the book is and what you want from it.
- When it is too long, split it and paste the next part.
- Copy the answer back into your document and fix the formatting.
- Ask for a rewrite and get a new version. Read all of it to find what changed.
- Next time, explain the project again from the start.
- It already sees the document you have open and the folder around it. Point at anything else with @.
- It reads the whole book itself, chapter by chapter. Nothing to split or paste.
- Results land in your folder as files, or as notes on the page they are about.
- Rewrites come back marked on your own text, grouped, each with its reason.
- What you are working on carries over to the next session.
It works inside your folder, not inside a chat history
What makes it more than a chat window is where it works: the folder you already keep your notes and documents in, which it treats as its knowledge base.
- The whole folder is in reach by default — notes, PDFs, books, Word and PowerPoint files, scanned pages once recognised. Narrow it with @, or to only the documents you added.
- It finds things by reading them, not by guessing from similarity, and every answer lists the documents it actually read.
- What it produces goes back into the folder as files — reading notes, translations, drafts — and becomes material for the next thing you ask. The folder gets more useful the more you use it.
- Every change it makes there can be rolled back, and what it remembers about you is a file you can edit.
Read, write, revise — at two speeds
It is the same assistant at both, and how much you hand over is decided job by job, not in a setting. On the left, one step on what is open; on the right, a run of minutes to hours whose result is a file.
Understand the paper or book.
Ask about a passage, a boxed chart or the whole folder — answers quote the page.
Pick a reading lens; it annotates chapter by chapter, then sums up what it found.
Turn ideas into a draft.
Draft the section under your cursor, or carry on where you stopped.
Approve the outline; it drafts the whole piece from the documents in your folder.
Get the draft into shape.
Select a sentence; the rewrite appears in place as a tracked change.
Leave comments or say what to change; edits come back marked, saved only when you accept.
Plus the long grinds: a three-hundred-page translation in one run; a scanned file recognised page by page.
Already open, wherever you happen to be working
An assistant crammed into one narrow panel teaches you to use it for small things only. This one is in all three places you actually work.
- Start from an empty window with a single box. Once you send, the conversation opens across the main area, so a long answer, a plan or a set of changes is readable where it appears.
- Keep it in the panel beside what you are reading when the document is the point, and ask about the passage you just selected.
- It is inside the editor too: select a line, ask for a rewrite or a continuation, and the result arrives as a tracked change in place rather than as a reply to copy.
- Mention a document, a whole folder or a skill with @ — what you point at is what it works on, and you can see exactly what that was.
It does the work without asking; it does not choose the direction without asking
Autonomy is only comfortable when the expensive decisions are still yours. So the gates are deliberate, and they are always in the same place: before the work, not after it.
- A reading pass starts from a lens you pick — guide, review, critique or study — because what counts as worth a note depends on why you are reading.
- The outline comes to you before a word of the draft is written, and you can send it back with comments on particular sections rather than rejecting the whole thing.
- A translation asks you to agree the glossary first, because terminology is the one thing that cannot be fixed cheaply once three hundred pages exist.
- Anything that rewrites text you already have comes back as marked changes, grouped and each with its reason, and nothing is saved until you accept it.
One job, end to end: a report from the papers in one folder
What handing over a real piece of writing looks like, step by step — and where you come in.
Say what you want
One box, plain language: point at the folder with @, say what the report should argue and who it is for.
Read the outline it proposes
Sections and the point each one makes, before any drafting. This is the cheap moment to disagree.
Comment where it is off
Leave a comment on the two sections that are wrong. It changes those, not the whole outline.
Approve and let it run
Sections arrive as they are finished, each drawn from your papers with verbatim quotes that click back to the page. Read the first while the third is still being written.
Stop for the night
Stopping is a pause. What is done stays done, and tomorrow it carries on from there instead of planning again.
Take the file, then revise it
The report is a Markdown file in your folder. Ask for changes and they come back marked, for you to accept.
What it is like to have one running
A job you cannot see the inside of is a job you cannot trust. Most of these exist for that reason rather than for speed.
Progress, as it happens
Work lands as each part finishes — a chapter annotated, a section drafted, a batch of pages recognised — instead of an hour of silence followed by everything at once.
You can check what it said
Conclusions carry verbatim quotes, and one click takes you to the page they came from. Answers say which documents they drew on, so a wrong one is traceable to the page that misled it. If it looked something up online, the pages it actually used are listed at the end.
Skills instead of prompt libraries
A skill is a page of plain text saying how a recurring job should be done. Write it once, call it by name with /, and it applies the same way here, on the canvas or to a selection in the editor.
It keeps the thread across sessions
What you are working on, and the things you keep coming back to, carry over — so you are not re-explaining the project every time you open the app.
Where it gets hard
- It runs on your machine, and only when asked
There is no scheduler and nothing runs while you are away, so nothing is quietly spending credits. Close the app or let the laptop sleep and a job stops; what was finished is already in your folder and it resumes from there — but you cannot start a six-hour translation and shut the lid.
- Long jobs cost what they cost
A whole-book read or a three-hundred-page translation is hours of model work, priced in credits, or billed by your provider if you use your own key. Try the shape of the job on one chapter first — it tells you most of what the last one would.
- It cannot choose the argument for you
It will finish a badly conceived draft as diligently as a good one, and "make this better" gets a confident pass that changes everything and improves nothing. The outline comes to you first because only you know which argument you wanted to make — a misunderstanding there costs two minutes, not an evening.
- Looking something up is not a full survey
Searching the web here is a lookup in the middle of answering — a few queries against the gap in what you already have, on a budget per turn. It is not a systematic sweep of everything published on a subject, and it will tell you what it searched rather than implying it read the field. When the answer really matters, put the sources into your folder and ask again.
Common questions
What can the assistant actually do on its own?
Three things, each at two sizes. Read: ask about a passage or across the whole folder, or pick a reading lens for a paper or a book and it annotates chapter by chapter and writes up what it found. Write: have one section drafted at the cursor, or approve an outline and have the whole piece drafted from your documents, up to book length. Revise: have one sentence rewritten, or say what should change — or leave comments — and get the whole document back as tracked changes, a Word file included. It also grinds through the long mechanical jobs: a three-hundred-page translation in one run, a scanned file recognised page by page.
How is this different from pasting my files into a chat assistant?
In a chat window you carry the job between turns: you paste the material in, split it when it is too long, copy the answer back into your document and explain the project again next time. Here the assistant already sees the document you have open and the folder around it, reads a whole book itself, puts results into your folder as files, and brings rewrites back as marked changes on your own text.
Is it a copilot or an agent?
Both, and it is the same assistant either way. At your elbow it works on what is open: the paragraph you selected, a rewrite that arrives as a tracked change, a question about the page you are on. Handed a whole job it plans, shows you the plan, then works for minutes or hours while you do something else. How much you hand over is decided job by job, not once in a setting.
Does it do things without asking me?
It does the work without asking; it does not choose the direction without asking. Anything with a shape you would argue about comes to you first — the outline before a draft is written, the glossary before a translation starts — and rewrites of text you already have arrive as tracked changes you accept or reject rather than as replacements.
Can it look things up online?
Yes, when the question needs it. It works from your own folder first and searches the web for what is not in there, and the pages it actually used are listed as numbered references at the end of the answer — only the ones it really cited. It also checks itself afterwards: when an answer rests on a figure of the kind that goes out of date, or on a note of yours more than a year old, it verifies that in the background while you are reading and appends a correction if the world has moved on. And you can tell it not to search — say to use only the book you pointed at, and it will refuse to go outside that and tell you it did.
Can I stop a long job and carry on later?
Yes. Stopping is a pause rather than a cancel: what was finished is already saved in your folder, and picking it up again continues from where it stopped instead of planning the whole thing over.
Where does the assistant live in the app?
Wherever you are working: across the main area of the window when the conversation is the point, in the panel beside a document when the document is, and inside the editor on a selection. Mention documents, folders and skills with @.
Does it work while my computer is asleep?
No. The work happens on your machine, so closing the app or putting it to sleep stops the job. Everything finished up to that point is already on disk, and the job resumes from there.
See also
Every AI edit is marked on your text, grouped with its reason, and waits for you.
Hand it a change request in this conversation (@ the file) or as margin comments — the edits come back for you to accept.
The longest job it takes on: parts, chapters and a ledger of what has already been argued.
One run, three hundred pages, one agreed set of terms.
What a reading pass over a whole book actually produces.
The short end of the same thing — one question, answered with quotes.
How to tell it the way you want a recurring job done.
What it runs on: a MindMax plan, or the API key you already have.
How an ordinary folder becomes a knowledge base it can work in — and gives your files back unchanged.
The step-by-step guide: pointing it at material, the approval gates, pausing and resuming.