# Margin Intelligence

> An assistant that operates the product through the same tools you do, what one action costs against your allowance, and where it is not allowed to look.

Margin Intelligence is the assistant built into The Margin. Press `⌘ J`
anywhere in the app to open it, or `Ctrl J` on Windows and Linux.

You can also talk to it. Tap the mic in the message box to dictate, or hold it
to talk and let go: the words are sent after a short countdown you can undo.
It works the same on the phone. See [Talking instead of typing](https://themarginapp.com/docs/voice).

## What it can do

It reads and writes your workspace for you. A few of the things people ask it
for:

- Make a board, add and move cards, complete them, lay out a week.
- Write, edit and search notes, or add to one you already have.
- Log a habit, record an expense, some income or money someone owes.
- Add shapes and text to a whiteboard.
- Save a recipe from a link. In a family workspace, put dinner on Thursday,
  send the ingredients to the shopping list, and run chores and pocket money.
- Read and reply in chat threads you are in.
- Answer questions from what the Mind remembers.
- Tell you what your week looks like, in a few lines. See
  [Your week, across workspaces](#your-week-across-workspaces).
- Explain how any part of The Margin works. It looks the answer up in these
  docs and gives you the link to the page, so "how do I add someone to the
  family?" gets the same answer the docs give.

It gets there with the tools an agent you connect over MCP gets, with a few of
its own on top: searching the web, handing work to a specialist, and asking
where to keep something you told it about yourself. It
acts as you, with your role, so it cannot do anything you could not do
yourself in the app. See [Agents and MCP](https://themarginapp.com/docs/agents-and-mcp).

> **Known limit: What it is not given**
>
> - It cannot unlock a PIN-locked item or your Vault, and it cannot seal anything
>   into the Vault. (It can hide an item from memory when you ask, and bring it
>   back the same way.) A lock the assistant could open would not be a lock.
> - It cannot export your whole memory. That is your call, in
>   **Settings → Your Brain**.
> - It cannot switch workspace mid-conversation. It works in the one you asked
>   from, and can tell you which others you have. The week overview and memory
>   recall below are the only things it reads from the others, and it only
>   reads.
> - It cannot see an item sealed in a Vault through any of its tools, even while
>   the Vault is unlocked. Unlocking lets its memory recall the item; nothing
>   else.

## Your week, across workspaces

Most people's week does not live in one workspace. The pitch is in your own,
the school run and the grocery list are in the household's. Ask "what does my
week look like?" and Margin Intelligence answers from all of them at once:
tasks that are due, what is on the calendar, the dinners that are planned,
chores and whose turn each one is, what is still on the shopping lists, your
habits and your own journal lines. The answer is short, grouped by day: the
workspace you asked from in full, and each other workspace as what is yours
this week plus one line for the rest ("Studio North: 8 tasks overdue"). Ask
about that workspace and it opens the line up. Two workspaces' shopping lists
are reported separately, never as one count.

If you would rather keep them apart, open
**Settings → Your Brain** on the web, or
**Settings → Data** in the phone app, and set **Answer from**
to **This workspace**. The choice follows your account to every device. It
appears only if you belong to more than one workspace.

A few things hold whichever you choose:

- Across workspaces it only reads. Anything it adds or changes still goes into
  the workspace you are in.
- What it reads in another workspace is not remembered in this one. A
  conversation that looked across workspaces teaches the Mind nothing, so a
  housemate's pet or a team's client never turns up as a fact about you in
  your personal workspace.
- Each workspace keeps its own rules. It reads boards you are a member of,
  leaves out locked notes and boards, your Vault and anything hidden from
  memory, and shows only your own habits and journal, never a housemate's.
- Each workspace keeps its own plan. Chores, meals and the shopping list are
  read where that workspace's plan includes them.
- The setting covers memory too. With **All my workspaces**, when it looks
  something up in memory it searches the Mind of each workspace you belong to,
  under that workspace's rules, and says where a fact came from ("from Home:
  the dentist is Dr. Lee"). With **This workspace**, only the one you are in.
- A chore is reported as done only when it has been checked off. On a chore that
  takes turns it names whose turn it is now and who did it last time.

Assistants you connect yourself (Claude, ChatGPT, Cursor and others) follow
this setting too, inside the workspaces you granted when you connected them.
**This workspace** narrows them to the workspace they are working in; **All my
workspaces** never reaches past what you granted. See
[Agents and MCP](https://themarginapp.com/docs/agents-and-mcp).

Wherever you ask, it also reads [About you](https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-mind#about-you): the few
facts about yourself that you keep for every workspace and nobody else sees.
Tell it something about yourself in your own workspace and it keeps it there.
In a household or team workspace it first asks **Where should I keep this?**,
with **For the household** (or **For the team**) and **Just for me**, and
nothing is saved until you choose.

## Specialist agents

The assistant hands a week's planning to a planner, and a question that needs
digging to a research agent that searches the web. That works on every plan
and needs nothing from you.

On the Team plan a team can also make agents of its own: a name, instructions
and a set of tools, run by hand or on a schedule, with every result kept for
the team to read. See [Team agents](https://themarginapp.com/docs/team-agents). To work with an
assistant you already use, connect it over MCP: see
[Agents and MCP](https://themarginapp.com/docs/agents-and-mcp).

When several agents work in one workspace, the rules they work under are a
written pact. See [Agent Pacts](https://themarginapp.com/docs/agent-pacts).

## What an action costs

**AI actions a month**

- **100** while a trial runs, unless your paid plan already gives more

- **75** on Free
- **600** on Pro
- **1,200** on Family, pooled across the household
- **600** per seat on Team

One action is a typical request. A turn that calls several tools is a loop of
calls, so a longer piece of work counts as several actions. What you have used
this month is in **Settings → Billing**.

When the allowance runs out, the assistant says so and stops. Everything else
in the app keeps working. From there you can:

- top up in **Settings → Billing**: $5 for 150 actions or $20 for 800, and
  top-ups never expire;
- connect an MCP client of your own, which never draws on this allowance (Pro
  and up);
- or wait for the count to start again on the 1st.

The Mind's background work has a separate allowance and never touches this
one. See [The Mind](https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-mind).

## When it says it is paused

The service has a daily limit on what the assistant can spend, everyone
together. Free plans pause first, once the day's spending reaches their share
of that limit (half of it), and everyone pauses only if the whole limit is
reached. On Free your message then gets this answer in place of a reply:
"Margin Intelligence is paused for free plans for the rest of today, because
free plans have used their share of what the service can spend in a day. Paid
plans keep working. It is back when the day resets at midnight UTC, or right
away on a paid plan. Nothing you did is lost." If the whole limit is reached,
everyone sees: "Margin Intelligence is paused for the rest of today, because
the whole service hit its daily limit. It is back when the day resets at
midnight UTC. Nothing you did is lost." The pause uses none of your own
allowance. See
[Plans and limits](https://themarginapp.com/docs/plans-and-limits#a-pause-on-a-very-busy-day).

## What it is not allowed to see

Your Vault while it is locked (and, through its tools, even while it is
open), and anything marked **Hide from memory**. Both
are kept out of retrieval itself, so they never reach an answer to be filtered
out at the end. Something woven privately is recalled only when it is directly
relevant, and never leads.

In a shared workspace the assistant sees what you can see. It cannot be used to
read a household member's private material, or a board you are not on.

## Where it runs

The assistant runs as its own service, apart from the web app, so the rest of
the product stays quick while a long task is in flight. It also means the
assistant needs a connection. Everything else in the app works offline; this
does not.

> **Note: Your words and the model** To answer, the relevant content is sent to the model provider for that
> request. Requests only go to hosts whose terms forbid training on what you
> send and that keep none of it. The [privacy page](https://themarginapp.com/privacy) names every
> provider.

## When it gets something wrong

It will. If it keeps believing something untrue about you, find the line in
**Settings → Your Brain** and edit or forget it. If it has a
person or a project wrong, open them on **Names** in the Mind and teach it
there. Telling it in the chat may or may not be remembered; a line you add to
**About you** always is, in every workspace. An edit to the memory is read by
every answer after it.

**Where to next**

- [The Mind](https://themarginapp.com/docs/the-mind): what it remembers and how to correct it
- [Agents and MCP](https://themarginapp.com/docs/agents-and-mcp): the same tools, from a client of your own
- [Plans and limits](https://themarginapp.com/docs/plans-and-limits): allowances on every plan


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Section: The Mind. Checked against the running product on October 5, 2026.
Web page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/margin-ai. Every docs page: https://themarginapp.com/docs/llms.txt