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Brunel is organized around four levels: Organizations, Projects, Sessions, and Context Files. Understanding how these relate to each other will help you get the most out of the platform.

Organizations

An Organization is the top-level container in Brunel — it represents your company, team, or any group of people collaborating together. Everything in Brunel lives inside an organization: projects, sessions, members, billing, and settings. Key things to know:
  • When you sign up, you’ll be prompted to create your first organization
  • A single Brunel account can belong to multiple organizations — useful if you work across multiple teams or clients. On every login, you’ll see the organization selection screen and choose which one to enter
  • Organizations have their own member roster, roles, and billing subscription
  • If you’ve been invited to join an existing organization, accept the invitation from your email — you’ll be placed directly into that org without needing to create one

Projects

A Project represents a codebase, product, or initiative. Projects live inside an organization and are the container for your planning sessions. Key things to know:
  • Create one project per codebase or distinct area of work — for example, backend-api, mobile-app, or platform-infra
  • All members of an organization can see all projects, subject to their role permissions
  • Projects can be edited (renamed, updated description) or archived. Archived projects are recoverable — they’re hidden from the active view but nothing is deleted

Sessions

A Session is a single AI planning conversation within a project. Each session has a type, a name, a full message history, and a lifecycle phase. Key things to know:
  • Sessions are the core unit of work in Brunel — create one per task or ticket
  • All session history is persistent and cloud-synced. Closing the app, switching tabs, or switching team members does not lose any messages
  • Multiple sessions can be open simultaneously in the tab interface

Session Types

TypeUse when…
Feature PlanningDefining requirements for something new
Bug FixDiagnosing an issue and planning a targeted fix
RefactoringImproving code without changing external behavior
General PlanningSpikes, research, migrations, or anything exploratory

Session Lifecycle

Every session moves through four phases — all transitions are manual:
Backlog → Planning → Execution → Verification
PhaseMeaning
BacklogCreated but not yet actively being planned
PlanningActively building the plan with AI
ExecutionPlan has been exported; coding agent is working
VerificationAgent work is complete; verifying against the plan

Context Files

Context Files are documents attached to a session that give Brunel’s AI the background it needs to plan accurately for your specific codebase and team. Key things to know:
  • Supported formats: plain text, Markdown, code files, .docx, .xlsx
  • Files are stored in the cloud and associated with the session they were uploaded to
  • Docx and xlsx files have inline viewers — no need to download them to read them
  • The right context files dramatically improve plan quality — see Context Files for guidance on what to include

MCP Integration

Brunel runs a local MCP (Model Context Protocol) server that coding agents can connect to directly. Once connected, your agent can read plans, context files, and session metadata without any copy-pasting. See MCP Integration for full setup instructions.