Agents and automations on shared items

On something shared, each person talks to their own operator, and nobody talks to anyone else's. When you @mention the operator in a shared conversation, the one that answers is yours, with your connections, your lists, your automations and what Roma remembers for you, and the reply lands in the conversation for everyone to read. Outside agents connected to your account meet shared items too, with the same boundaries you have.

Your operator in a shared conversation

The operator stays out of a shared conversation until someone writes @operator. Then it stays in until someone silences it, and a reply to one of its messages brings it back. When you call it in, the operator that answers is yours, whole: your connections (Gmail, Google Calendar, Linear and the rest), your lists and items, your automations and experts, and what Roma remembers for you. When someone else mentions it, their operator answers them, with theirs.

Nobody reaches anyone else's. A member never uses your connections, your tools, your private items or what Roma remembers about you, and you never use theirs. Asked for something of another person's, the operator says so by name: "I can't reach Noor's email." If you have not connected an app, it says so and points you to your own chat, because connecting an app happens in your own chat only.

Whenever it answers you, it answers as yours. Once it is in, it stays quiet on a message that does not mention it, unless the message is plainly for it. Ask it what it can do in a shared conversation and it answers from these rules, the same way every time.

Only your own words are instructions

Everyone with the link reads the conversation, and anyone in it can write in the body. So a line in the body, a line in someone else's message, or a line in an email or a web page the operator read is never a reason for it to read, post, offer or draft anything. The operator brings in exactly what your words asked for, and nothing said in a shared conversation is remembered on its own. Your own memory is yours to read or add to from your own words.

Every reply is public, the material behind it is not

There is no private side of a shared conversation. What the operator answers you, everyone with the link reads, the moment it is made. What the others never see is the material behind the answer: the emails it read, the rows of your list, the page it looked at. They see the step, not its contents.

Everything inside Roma follows the settings you chose, exactly as in your private chat. What leaves Roma asks first: an email sent, an issue filed, a post, a file written to a repo, a run of the operator's browser (in beta), a sender archived or unsubscribed. The approval card is yours to answer. In a shared conversation it always asks, even where you turned asking off for yourself, and another member's press on your card is refused. How approvals work in general is in approvals.

The shared thing keeps its own rules

In a shared task the status, the due date and every other property are the owner's, and the title and the body are everyone's, so the operator edits the body through the conversation for anyone in it and sets the status for the owner alone. In a shared list's conversation the operator can count, filter and find the list's items for anyone in it, and the answer lands in the conversation everyone reads. Version history and restore stay the owner's.

Finding "my tasks" in any conversation finds the items shared with you one by one beside your own, and a shared list's items come when you ask about that list. "Create a task from that" on a highlighted passage creates an item on your own Tasks list, private to you. Inside a shared list, an item created from the conversation lands in that list by default, where every member sees it, and belongs to the owner with your name on the history. You can always name another list.

Your automations in a shared conversation

Ask for one of your automations by name, or @mention it, and it runs. Its result arrives in the shared conversation as the operator's message, and goes into the body when you ask. Only your own automations exist on your turn: another member's do not, and yours do not on theirs. A standing order such as "whenever a receipt is posted here, log it" is an automation of your own, not a rule of the conversation, and you create it in your own chat.

The operator never files something you capture into a shared list on its own. It lands there only when you name the list in your own words and no other list of yours could be meant. Otherwise it lands on your Tasks list, and the operator asks whether to move it.

Outside agents and shared items

ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor and the other agents you connect to your account reach your lists and items through Roma's MCP server, and they meet what is shared with you as well. When an agent reads an item somebody shared with you, the item says it is shared with you and what the agent may edit on it: the title and the body of a task shared with you one at a time, or everything on an item of a shared list you are in.

An agent's write keeps the same boundary you have. A field the owner keeps, such as the due date of a task shared with you on its own, is refused by name and nothing is written, so the agent never reports a change nobody made. An edit it makes lands under the owner with your name as its actor, the way your own save does. Moving and deleting items stay with the owner, and when an agent moves one of your items into a shared list somebody else owns, the item is handed over the way it is when you move it yourself. What an agent can and cannot do in your account in general is in what an agent can and cannot do.

Questions people ask

Can someone in a shared conversation use my Gmail through the operator?

No. Your connections answer only when you call the operator in, and nobody else's operator can reach them. If another member asks the operator for something in your mail, it tells them by name that it cannot reach your email.

Does the operator answer every message in a shared conversation?

No. It stays out until someone writes @operator or mentions one of their automations, then it stays in until someone silences it. A reply to one of its messages brings it back. A message that names a person is for that person, not for the operator.

Can the other people see what my operator read to answer me?

No. They read the reply and see that a step was taken, and nothing of its contents: not the emails, not the rows of your list, not the page. What is in the reply itself, everyone reads.

Does an automation I run from a shared conversation report to everyone?

Yes. When you ask for one of your automations there, its result arrives in the shared conversation as the operator's message, where everyone in it reads it, and it goes into the body if you ask for that. Only your own automations run on your turn.