Multiple Projects

CoAutoResearch can show several generated research projects in one local UI. Each project remains an independent working copy.

Start A Dashboard

From the parent folder that should contain generated projects:

mkdir -p co-autoresearch-projects
co-auto-research ui --projects-dir co-autoresearch-projects

The CLI opens the UI automatically on local machines. If it cannot, open the printed URL manually:

http://127.0.0.1:8765

Click + in the left sidebar to create a project from the immutable template. Choose the project’s default agent backend in the creation dialog. The new project appears in the sidebar and becomes the active project. Creating it does not start research; send a brief and review the direction first.

You can also create projects from the CLI first:

co-auto-research init my-study
co-auto-research init paper-a
co-auto-research ui --projects-dir .

The left sidebar lists each generated project by project name, such as my-study and paper-a.

The UI-created project path is always inside the --projects-dir folder. If a folder with the same sanitized name already exists, creation fails instead of overwriting it.

Isolation Model

Switching projects changes the active project for all file, resource, trial, settings, and agent-session API calls.

  • PROJECT.md, resources/, workspace/, manuscript/, and research_trajectory/ are read and written only inside the selected project.

  • Service runtime state is stored outside research files, separated by project. COAUTO_RUNTIME_ROOT can select a custom service runtime location.

  • Per-project agent defaults, including agent.backend, are stored in that runtime state and can be changed later in Settings.

  • Agent commands run with the selected project as the working directory.

  • Starting or stopping an agent run affects only the selected project.

Switching the sidebar does not merge projects and does not stop an agent session that is already running in another project.

Single-Project Mode

Single-project use is unchanged:

cd my-study
co-auto-research ui

This opens the same UI with only my-study in the project list.