Team files
Open a team's folder in the Explorer, edit and save its files on the team machine, and search them with HQ's own search.
Open a team's files
- Pick the team
In the HQ sidebar's Teams view, press the folder icon on a team, or right-click it and choose Open Team Files. HQ: Open Team Files in the Command Palette asks you to pick a team.
- Work in the Explorer
The team's folder appears in the Explorer, named after the team and its organization, for example
Backend team (Acme). Its address starts withhq://. Open, edit and save files as usual; every save goes to the team machine.
Opening a second team adds a second folder to the same window. Remove a folder from the window the usual way (right-click it, Remove Folder from Workspace).
Changes made on the team machine, by an agent or a teammate, show up in the editor within a few seconds. If someone changed a file after you opened it, saving it says "This file changed on the team machine. Save again to compare." Save again and the editor offers to compare the two versions or overwrite.
When a file is read only
| You see | Why |
|---|---|
| "You can view this team but not change its files." | You have viewer access to the team. |
| "Your plan is read-only. Reactivate billing in HQ to save files or start sessions." | Your organization's plan does not allow changes right now. |
| "This file came from an AI Workforce One HQ template, so it is read-only." | On a team created from a template, .claude/ and the template's manifest cannot be changed from any HQ app. |
| "This file contains masked secret values. Edit it from an HQ terminal." | The file holds a value from the team's secrets. You see it masked, as in HQ, so it cannot be saved from here. |
| "This file is too large to open here. Open it in HQ or from a terminal." | Text files up to 8 MB open here (binary files up to 64 MB). Files over 16 MB open read only. |
When the team machine is off
Folders and files you already opened stay readable. Opening a new file, or saving, says, for example, "Backend team is off. Wake it to open this file." (or "to save this file") with a Wake Team button. Opening and reading files never wakes a team machine by itself.
If the machine is updating, the extension says when its files are back. If it needs an update
first, the team shows update needed and the extension offers Open Team Settings, where an
owner or admin presses Update machine.
Search a team's files
- Start the search
Right-click a team and choose Search in Team Files, or run HQ: Search in Team Files. With an
hq://file open, the search runs on that file's team. - Type the text
Type what to find, then pick options: Match case, Whole word, and Regular expression when you can edit the team. Then, optionally, the files to include and to exclude, as comma-separated patterns such as
src/**, *.ts. - Open a result
The results appear in the Search view of the HQ sidebar, grouped by file. Click one to open the file at that line.
The search runs on the team machine, so it covers every file, not only the ones you opened. A line that holds a secret value is left out of the results. When there are too many results, the view says "more were found; narrow the search".
Good to know
- Editors give team files basic support: syntax colors everywhere, and TypeScript and JavaScript features for the files you open. Language servers that need local files, such as most Python, Go and Rust tools, do not work on team files. Use a session terminal to run builds and tests.
- The extension never runs anything from team files.
- File contents are kept in the editor's memory only, never on this computer's disk, and are cleared when you sign out.