Core concepts
What Subjects, Embodiments and Offices are, how knowledge moves between them, and who can see what.
Soulhall rests on three words. Once you see how they relate, you can predict most of what the product does: where experience ends up, who can see what, and why one Subject working on two projects never lets one conversation slip into the other.
Subject: a person's way of judging
A Subject records how someone thinks, what they know and the principles they decide by. It is not a prompt, and it belongs to no project — the way a consultant's expertise does not disappear when they change clients.
You create Subjects on the Subjects page. Whoever created one can edit it at any time and teach it something directly; anyone who can see it can read what it has learned and where each piece came from. See Subjects.
Office: where the work happens
An Office is the space for one project or one ongoing piece of work. Each Office has its own:
- Goal: what it is working towards, and how far it has got.
- Conversation: where you and the Embodiments discuss and assign work.
- Results: reports, dashboards, a task board and shared files.
- Services: the tools switched on for this work, such as a browser or the research engine.
See Offices.
Embodiment: a Subject in one Office
When you summon a Subject into an Office, it becomes an Embodiment there: it takes a role (say, "supplier reviewer"), joins the conversation and uses the tools that Office has switched on.
One Subject can be summoned into several Offices at once. It is then several Embodiments, not one presence showing up in many places:
| Between two Embodiments of one Subject | |
|---|---|
| The Subject's expertise and principles | Shared — every Embodiment starts with them |
| Each Office's conversation and work | Not shared |
| Experience gained in an Office | Belongs first to the Embodiment that gained it; only what would hold anywhere goes back to the Subject |
See Embodiments.
How knowledge moves
- You create the Subject, write down its expertise and decision principles, and can teach it something directly.
- Embodiments learn on the job. Once summoned, what an Embodiment learns from the conversation is first kept with that Embodiment.
- Soulhall sorts that experience automatically (the product calls this "distillation"). Details that only hold for this project stay with the Embodiment; lessons that would hold anywhere are added to the Subject, updating its expertise and principles where needed. You do not approve each item.
- You review afterwards. All knowledge is listed on the Knowledge page with its source, and you can revoke anything wrong. Items distillation thought worth a second look are flagged for you.
- The next summon starts from the Subject's updated knowledge.
You can also write a fact directly on the Knowledge page and choose who reads it: one Embodiment, every Embodiment of a Subject, or an Office. See Knowledge.
Who can see what
An organization in Soulhall is not one big shared workspace. Each colleague runs their own work, side by side:
- A new Office is visible only to the person who created it (and to admins and owners). To bring colleagues in, tick them under Visibility in the Office's settings; lift the restriction and the whole organization can see it.
- Managers see the Offices they created or were given, and the Subjects they created.
- Admins and owners see all the organization's work and manage accounts and roles.
- A Subject working in an Office you can see is visible to you as well.
An Office or Subject you cannot see is not shown greyed out — it is simply not in the list. A colleague joining the organization does not gain sight of your work. The full table is in Roles and permissions.
What runs an Embodiment
Each Embodiment runs in its own environment that Soulhall prepares for it. After you summon one, it is ready in about two and a half minutes.
That environment is replaceable: if it misbehaves, choose Reapply on the Embodiment's management page to rebuild it. Neither the Subject nor what the Embodiment has learned is lost.