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Version: Next (nightly)

Everyday tools

Features that show up all over the app rather than living in one module. None of them needs much setup. They're here so you know they exist.

  • ⌘K (or Ctrl-K) anywhere: do or find anything.
  • The dashboard is your home screen. Calendar in the nav is everything dated.
  • Tags, units, templates, forms, mobility: workspace-wide, almost nothing to configure.

Tags​

Labels that cross modules. Put the same tag on a part, a task, and a machine, and they all show up together under it.

  • A tag goes on whatever fits: summer-2026, experimental. Each can carry a color.
  • Merge two tags that mean the same thing, and Cobb will do it when you ask: everything carrying the first ends up carrying the second, and the first is removed.
  • Tags sort by how much they still matter, not alphabetically, so a trade-show tag does not head every printer's row forever because it starts with a digit. Nothing to set up: it works off the tag history you already have.
  • A quiet tag folds behind a "+N" button at the end of the tag row. Quiet takes both: not applied to anything for about six months, AND on only a handful of records. A tag on a dozen or more records never folds, however old, because it describes how the workspace is organised. Click the button to bring them back, hover it for why each one folded ("last used 6mo ago"). Nothing is deleted, and a folded tag still turns up in search and filters.
  • Pin a tag (the pin on the Tags page) and it sorts first and never folds away, the escape hatch for anything the ordering gets wrong.

Because tags span kinds, they're a fast way to pull a cross-section of the workspace: everything for one event or one push, no matter which module each piece lives in.

Units​

A shared vocabulary for quantity fields, so "g", "gram", and "grams" all mean the same thing.

  • Cobblr ships the common units (gram, meter, each). Add your own.
  • A display preference controls whether you see the symbol, the full name, or both.
  • The unit picker draws from this list wherever a quantity appears, which is what keeps totals consistent instead of free-text guesses.

Templates​

A template pre-fills a new record so you're not starting from a blank form.

  1. Define one for a kind (a part, a machine, an asset) with the defaults and tags you always set.
  2. Stamp a new record from it. Those values are in place, ready to tweak.

Templates belong to the workspace, so they match how yours actually works.

Search and the command palette​

Press ⌘K (or Ctrl-K) anywhere to open the command palette, one box to do or find anything.

  • Actions rank first (scan, add a thing, open the scan inbox, describe a setup for the AI to build, customize the workspace), then features and settings, then your things.
  • Features and settings reaches every settings and system page, the same list the Configuration hub uses, and answers to words the label doesn't say: "roles" finds Permissions, "audit" finds the activity log.
  • Two letters jump to a record. A serial or code lands on the exact item.
  • "dark mode" (or "theme", "night", "light") brings up the theme toggle.
  • The header search bar draws on the same index and covers every kind of thing in your workspace: parts, machines, projects, notes, whatever modules you have enabled, results merged. Each module opts its records in, so the bar reaches further as you turn more on.
  • Searching a list looks at every text field, not only the name: a machine's manufacturer, a vendor's website, a task's description, and your own custom fields. "Bambu" finds the printer named X1 Carbon.

The navigation is your collections plus the two places every workspace has: Home, the things you keep, Locations, and the Scan Inbox. Files, Tags, Views, Discussion, Maintenance and the Calendar are reached from inside a record, from a list, or by name through the search, never from the nav, so a new workspace no longer opens on seven rows that lead to empty pages.

Navigation sits in a top bar by default. The small panel icon left of the cobblr wordmark flips it to a skinny left sidebar.

  • The Scan Inbox row carries a count of what is waiting to be filed, the same number the inbox shows at its top. It appears in the sidebar, on the top-bar chip and in the phone menu, refreshes every few seconds, and disappears at zero.

  • A grown sidebar sorts itself into Collections and Tools. Up to five rows it is a plain list. From six, two quiet labels appear: Collections for the things you keep and Tools for the places you go to do something (Locations, the Scan Inbox, Labels, Lists). Rows still drag within their own group, and nothing ever moves on its own. The top bar and the phone menu keep the flat list.

  • Outgrowing the top bar. The first time it has to fold a row you did not pin into more ▾, a small card asks once: Your workspace outgrew the top bar. Switch to the sidebar? Either answer is saved to your account and the card never comes back. Switch to the sidebar is always the last entry of the more menu too. Nothing changes your layout on its own, not a bigger workspace, not a new module, not an update.

  • The sidebar lays out every dropdown child (machine types, categories, grouped pages) always visible instead of behind hover menus. Pin it as a fixed column, or set it to auto-hide as a thin strip on the left edge that slides out when you reach for it.

  • Hide the top bar altogether and the sidebar becomes the whole frame: the brand and workspace switcher at its head, your nav in the middle, and a labeled action row at its foot, tools then you: Scan first on a row of its own, Build under it, then Search, Notifications, the label queue, the Live box and Ask Cobb, and under a rule Feedback, Configuration and your account.

  • Hold any nav row briefly, then drag to reorder it right there. A quick press that drifts a few pixels counts as a click and follows the link, and letting go of a drag never opens the item you were moving.

  • The layout choice follows your account, so signing in on another desktop keeps what you set.

  • Your own tables lead the navbar, with Locations and the Scan Inbox after them. Anything that does not fit folds into a "more" menu, and one tap in the Customize menu pins it back for good, in the order you drag them.

Configuration in the sidebar, phones, and adding a new kind of thing

Opening Configuration turns that same sidebar into the settings panel, with a back-to-workspace row to return, instead of stacking a second column.

Phones keep their own menu either way. On a phone the top bar slides away as you scroll down a long list and comes straight back the moment you scroll up, so the workspace switcher, scan, and the menu are always one flick away.

Adding a new kind of thing is a single screen: type what you want to track and pick whether you own one of it or keep an amount of it, with a suggestion pre-picked from the name. It lands in a navbar menu named after its kind, so a home inventory's Pantry, Cleaning Supplies and Tools collapse into one Inventory dropdown instead of spreading across the bar. The same screen is the "+ New category" dialog: a named copy of a module (your Yarn, your Pantry) is a category, an instance under the hood, and creating one turns on whatever it needs as part of Create rather than sending you off to enable it elsewhere.

Dashboard​

Home is your home screen, built to be glanced at. On a workspace with nothing in it yet, the first screen asks one thing: type what you have, or scan it. Everything else waits behind More ways to start, and choosing a starter there puts its Set up button inside the card you pressed. When the operator has switched AI off, the page says so once ("AI is off here. Barcodes, ISBNs and typed items still work") and offers no connect link that would lead nowhere. Top to bottom, once you have things:

  • Up next answers "what should I do" in date order, grouped into Overdue, Today, Next 7 days and Later. It reads your workspace calendar, so if a thing has a date it is here: scheduled maintenance, tasks with a due date, purchase orders by expected arrival, expiry dates, and any date field on your own records (a "next service" on a machine, a "renew by" on a document). Nothing needs wiring.
  • The overdue and coming-up alerts carry their context. Each row expands to the items it counted, most urgent first, saying how late or how soon, with Open on each, and the arrow lands on the collection's soonest-first view (Groceries' "Use it or lose it") rather than the whole table.
  • On its way sits at the top too, whenever a parcel is in flight. One row each: what it is, where it has got to, and the place to act. Delivered parcels sort to the top and are the only ones with something to do next.
  • Needs you: overdue tasks lead (their own due dates count, not only date fields on your things), a printer holding a finished plate waits for a Good or Scrapped verdict, and failed prints show up to be cleared. Act on the row itself: check off up to three overdue tasks, give a print its verdict in place, or expand a longer row to a per-item list. Anything else takes the arrow to its page.
  • At a glance: a grid of tiles, one per module that holds data.
  • Jump to, a grid of shortcut buttons, shows only on phones, where the navigation hides behind the menu button. On a desktop the same links are already in the top bar, so the dashboard leads with your content.
  • Pinned views: pin a saved view and it shows as its own card.
  • Scans that fit a table you have not set up yet show once, with your photos, as one line per table ("2 look like Groceries"). One press sets that table up and files every scan that fits it. Owners and admins see this, since it changes what the workspace holds. The put-away card beside it counts only the scans that still have nowhere to go.
  • Recent activity runs along the bottom.
  • Owners and admins arrange the whole dashboard, reordering or hiding sections and individual tiles.
How each section behaves at the edges

Up next: Overdue is coloured and sorted newest first, because the thing that slipped yesterday is the one you can still do something about. Each row says which tracker it came from and how far away it is ("3 days ago", "in 2 weeks"), and clicks through to the record. Long groups show the first few with a link to the full calendar. It looks back a year and forward a quarter, and hides itself entirely when nothing is scheduled.

At a glance: a tile for a module with several types (Machines, Assets) opens that module's page with the types as a chooser, rather than diving into the largest one. Enabled modules with nothing in them yet collapse into a single quiet "Also enabled" line instead of empty tiles.

Pinned views: a grouped view (a kanban by state, or by type) shows the breakdown with counts and proportion bars. When the grouping field isn't set on anything yet, the card shows the items with a hint to set it, rather than a misleading split. A brand-new workspace shows none of this furniture: the invitation to pin a view waits until there is something to pin, and recent activity stays quiet instead of leading with "no activity yet".

Unfiled scans: if a pile matches a bundle you haven't installed, a card offers to install it and file those items into the new table (owners and admins).

Calendar​

Everything dated in the workspace lands on one calendar at Calendar in the nav: scheduled maintenance, task due dates, orders by expected arrival, expiry dates, and any date field you added to your own records. It reads the same sources as the dashboard's Up next, so the two never disagree about what is coming.

To see it in your own calendar app:

  1. Copy the tokenized .ics URL from the subscribe bar.
  2. Paste it into Google Calendar's From URL or into Apple Calendar. No sign-in and no app.

The URL's token is the whole secret, so it is owner/admin-controlled: turn the feed off, or rotate the token to cut off every copy that has ever been shared, whenever you like.

Appearance​

Light and dark, at two levels:

  • Your account preference follows you across devices.
  • Any single device can override it (lock the shop wall display to dark without touching your default) or just match the OS.
  • Layout offers all three desktop layouts, Top bar, Sidebar and Sidebar only, each with a small preview, and picking one saves it to your account in a single step. The welcome tour offers the same three.

Forms​

A visual form builder controls what adding or editing a record looks like, per workspace, per kind.

  • Drag fields into the order that matches how you actually enter things, and group them under section headings.
  • Fields render as the control that fits their type. A relation field is a picker over the records it points to, so you choose by name instead of pasting an id. A server-managed field (one the server stamps, like Mobility's away date) shows read-only instead of an input that would silently revert.

On your phone​

Cobblr is a web app that installs like a native one.

  1. Open your instance in the phone's browser.
  2. Add it to the home screen: Share then Add to Home Screen on iOS, the install prompt or browser menu on Android.
  3. It gets its own icon and opens full screen without the browser chrome.

Nothing to download from a store and nothing extra to update. The app is whatever your instance is running. The phone is the capture device, so the paths built for it are the ones worth knowing:

  • The scanner runs continuously with no shutter to press.
  • The camera needs the instance to be on HTTPS.
  • Pairing your phone lets a desktop session send capture work to the phone in your pocket.

Mobility​

Tracks whether a thing is where it belongs.

  1. Turn it on.
  2. Give an inventory item or an asset a home location and mark it mobile.
  3. When its current location drifts from home, it shows as away with how long it's been gone, like "away · 3d", and a single Return home puts it back.

Things are fixed unless you mark them mobile, so only the things that actually move are watched.