#Sharing — Items, Documents, Folders & Groups

Your context is more useful when the right people can see it. Share a receipt with your accountant, a packing list with your family, or a whole folder with a group — and keep control of it the entire time.

#What It Does

Sharing lets you give another person — or a whole group — access to your items, documents, folders, and Q&A answers. You share by email address. If your recipient already has an ambientChat account, they get live access: the shared thing appears in their app under Shared with me, and they always see your latest version. If they don't have an account yet, they get an invitation email, and the moment they sign up the share activates automatically.

You decide whether each share is read-only (they can look, not touch) or read-write (they can help you keep it current). You can see everything you've shared, and you can revoke any share at any time — access disappears immediately. Nothing you share ever leaves your control.

Sharing the viewing side — how shared content shows up in your own library, the scope pill, and removing things others shared with you — is covered in the Inventory guide. This guide is about the act of sharing.

#How to Use It

#iOS App

#Sharing a Single Thing

  1. Open any item, document, folder, or Q&A answer
  2. Tap the share symbol (the arrow-out-of-a-box icon) — it opens the manage-sharing control for that thing
  3. Enter a person's email address, or pick a group you belong to
  4. Choose the access level: Can view (read-only) or Can edit (read-write)
  5. Add an optional note, then tap Share

The recipient gets access right away (or an invitation if they're new). The share symbol doubles as a status light: once something is shared, it carries a share badge so you can tell at a glance what's out in the world.

You can also reach the same control by long-pressing a card in a list and choosing Share.

#Sharing a Public Link (post it anywhere)

At the top of the sharing control is Anyone with the link — a public, view-only URL you can drop into Instagram, a text, Slack, an email, anywhere. Unlike a person-invite, a link needs no recipient and anyone who has it can view (they don't need an account to look — a sign-up prompt appears on the page).

  1. Open the sharing control and tap Create link
  2. Tap Copy to put the URL on your clipboard, or Share to hand it straight to Messages, Mail, or a social app via your phone's share sheet
  3. Paste it wherever you like — it unfurls as a rich preview card in most apps

The link is permanent — it keeps working so an old post never dead-links. You stay in control:

  • Reset link issues a fresh URL and kills the old one (use it if you posted somewhere you regret).
  • Stop sharing switches the public link off entirely — the URL then shows "no longer shared."

Sharing a Q&A answer as a public link asks you to Preview the page first — because an answer can mention your location, inventory, or names, you see exactly what a stranger will before you hand out the link. (Receipts are never shown on a public page.)

#Emailing it to someone (they read it in the email)

Under the link is a field that says Email it to friends. Type one or more addresses, tap the mail button, and ambientChat sends a branded email from you — with the thing itself inside it. Your recipient doesn't have to click anything, and they don't need an account.

What travels depends on what you shared:

What you shared What lands in their inbox
A note, a report, any text or markdown document The whole document, formatted — headings, lists and tables intact
A Q&A answer or a Panel-of-Experts thread Every answer, each labelled with the model that wrote it
A spreadsheet (CSV) A readable table, plus the original file attached
An Excel workbook, a PowerPoint deck, a Word file The original file attached — those formats can't be shown in an email
A PDF The first few pages as pictures, plus the PDF attached
A photo or a scan The picture itself, plus the original attached
A folder Its contents, with a link to browse the rest

A very long document is cut with a "read the rest" link rather than being silently chopped by the mail app. A file bigger than 10 MB isn't attached — the email says so and links to it instead.

The Open button is still there at the bottom, and it still leads to the full page where they can sign up if they want to ask follow-up questions. It's an invitation now, not a toll gate.

The same is true of a person-share: when you share with someone by email from the Person tab, the invitation they receive carries the same content.

#Sharing a Whole Folder

Share a folder and you share everything in it — and, because folder shares cascade to sub-folders, sharing Music also shares Music/Vinyl and everything beneath it. New things you add to the folder later are covered too.

  1. Long-press a folder (or open it and tap the share symbol)
  2. Choose Share, pick your recipient or group, and set the access level
  3. Everyone you shared with sees the folder — and its contents — under their Shared with me

#Seeing and Revoking What You've Shared

  • The share badge on any card tells you it's shared. Tap into the sharing control to see who it's shared with.
  • To stop sharing, open the sharing control and tap Revoke next to a recipient (or Stop sharing to revoke everyone). Access is removed immediately — the item vanishes from their Shared with me.

#Groups

Groups let you share with several people at once — a household, a project team, a set of neighbours — without re-typing addresses every time.

  1. Open Sharing / Groups from the Context tab
  2. Tap New group, name it, and invite people by email
  3. Invitees get an invitation to accept; once they do, they're members
  4. Share anything with the group and every member gets it. Remove a member and their access to the group's shares ends.

#Web

The web interface at app.ambientchat.ai mirrors sharing:

  1. Hover or open any item, document, or folder
  2. Click the share symbol to open the sharing control
  3. Enter an email or choose a group, set view or edit access, and confirm
  4. Manage recipients — and revoke — from the same control. Shared content you receive shows up under the Shared with me scope (see the Inventory guide)

The same control's Anyone with the link section gives you the public URL: Create link, then Copy it or Share it (your browser's share sheet where supported, otherwise it copies). Reset link and Stop sharing work exactly as on iOS.

#Via Chat

You can share by simply asking:

  • "Share the olive oil with my wife."
  • "Send the washing-machine manual to steve@example.com."
  • "Share my Recipes folder with the family group, read-only."
  • "Who have I shared the Warranties folder with?"
  • "Stop sharing that receipt with the repair shop."

The assistant uses the sharing tools on your behalf and tells you what it did — no confirmation taps, and an undo path if you change your mind.

#Via Claude Desktop (MCP)

Through the MCP connection these tools are available:

  • share_with_email — Grant a person live access to an item, document, folder, or conversation by email
  • share_with_group — Share something with an entire group
  • share_item / share_document / share_view / share_conversation — Share a specific kind of thing
  • revoke_share_grant — Remove a share (access ends immediately)
  • list_my_shares — See everything you've shared and with whom
  • list_shared_with_me — See what others have shared with you
  • create_group / invite_to_group / accept_group_invitation / get_group_members / remove_group_member / delete_group — Full group lifecycle
  • resend_invitation — Re-send a pending invitation

See the MCP Tools reference for the complete list.

#Tips & Tricks

  • Share the folder, not the files. If you'll share a whole set of things — every receipt for a trip, every manual for the kitchen — put them in a folder and share that once. New additions are covered automatically, and sub-folders come along for the ride.
  • Read-only by default is the safe choice. Give Can view unless the other person genuinely needs to edit. You can always upgrade a share to Can edit later.
  • Revoking is instant and total. The moment you revoke, the other person loses access and the item leaves their Shared with me. There's no lingering copy.
  • Groups save typing. For anyone you share with repeatedly — family, a work team — make a group once and share to the group forever after.

#Options

Setting What It Does Default
Access level Whether a recipient can view or also edit Can view (read-only)
Recipient A single email address or a group you belong to —
Folder cascade Sub-folders and their contents inherit the parent folder's shares On (automatic)

#Known Limitations

  • Person-shares are live; public links are view-only snapshots. Sharing with a person gives them live, always-current access once they have an account. A public link (Anyone with the link) is a read-only page anyone can open without an account — it can't be edited by viewers. Choose the person-invite for collaboration, the public link for reach.
  • Revoke removes access, not memory. If someone had Can edit and made changes while they had access, those edits remain — revoking stops future access, it doesn't roll back history.
  • Groups are for sharing, not chat. A group is a named set of people you share content with; it isn't a group-messaging thread.
  • An emailed copy can't be revoked. When you email a share, the content travels into someone's inbox. Stop sharing kills the link and any live access — it cannot reach the email they already have, the same way it can't unsend a screenshot. If that matters for a particular document, set its link to summary only before you email it, and the email carries the summary rather than the full text.
  • Invitations wait for signup. Share with someone who has no account and the grant stays pending until they sign up with that email — then it activates automatically. Use resend invitation if they've lost the email.

#Version History

Version Date What Changed
1 2026-07-05 Initial guide — in-app live sharing of items, documents, folders & Q&A; groups; folder-share cascade; revoke (v0.13.2)
2 2026-07-06 Public "Anyone with the link" sharing — permanent view-only URLs with Copy/Share, Reset & Stop; preview-before-publish for Q&A (AMB-455)
3 2026-08-21 Share emails now carry the content itself — documents, Q&A threads and tables render in the inbox; Office files and PDFs arrive as attachments; no account needed to read