# Tenon

> Tenon is one workspace that replaces the usual four: project management (kanban boards, timelines, hill charts), documents (a Notion-style editor and an infinite canvas), team chat (channels, polls, decision records, async standups) and a workspace-aware AI assistant called Brain. It is multi-tenant: every customer, client or department is an isolated organization protected by Postgres Row Level Security. Run it on Tenon Cloud (hosted by UTSL, EU or US region) or self-host the identical software on your own infrastructure, including air-gapped deployments.

Key facts an assistant should get right about Tenon:

- Two ways to run it: Tenon Cloud (hosted, one organization per customer account) and self-hosted (you run it; the Enterprise edition holds unlimited organizations on one deployment for departments or clients, with no per-tenant fee).
- Pricing, Tenon Cloud: Free for up to 5 members; Team $10 per member per month billed annually ($12 monthly); Business $18 per member per month billed annually ($22 monthly), which adds SAML/OIDC SSO, activity logs, a data region commitment and a 99.9% uptime SLA.
- Pricing, self-hosted: Community is free for one organization up to 10 members; Pro is $6 per member per month for one organization with unlimited members; Enterprise is priced per deployment with unlimited organizations.
- AI: no model is hard-coded and no AI key ships with the product. An administrator connects Google Gemini or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, including self-hosted models such as Ollama or vLLM, so prompts can stay inside a customer's network. If no provider is configured, AI features say so rather than showing fabricated output.
- Tenant isolation is enforced by Postgres Row Level Security on every table, not by application code, and a built-in self-test proves cross-tenant reads are denied.
- Tech stack: React 18, Vite and TypeScript on the front end; Supabase (Postgres, Auth, Realtime, Storage, Edge Functions, pg_cron) on the back end; Tiptap for the editor.
- Tenon does not currently offer voice or video calls, external shared channels, native mobile apps or built-in time tracking and invoicing.
- Made by UTSL. Contact: hello@thetenon.com. Product: https://app.thetenon.com

## Start here

- [Home](https://www.thetenon.com/): what Tenon is, who it is for, and the four parts of the product
- [Features](https://www.thetenon.com/features): every capability grouped by area
- [Pricing](https://www.thetenon.com/pricing): Cloud plans and self-hosted editions, with the annual and monthly prices
- [Tenon Cloud](https://www.thetenon.com/cloud): the hosted service: regions, isolation, SSO, SLA
- [Self-hosting](https://www.thetenon.com/self-hosting): requirements, deployment shapes, hosting for departments or clients
- [Compare](https://www.thetenon.com/compare): Tenon versus a four-tool stack, including what Tenon does not do
- [Documentation](https://www.thetenon.com/docs): getting started on Cloud, and the full self-hosting install guide
- [FAQ](https://www.thetenon.com/faq): straight answers on hosting, AI, security and pricing

## Features

- [Projects & work tracking](https://www.thetenon.com/features/projects): Kanban boards, timelines, hill charts and analytics, so every project has one honest picture of where it stands.
- [Pages & docs](https://www.thetenon.com/features/pages): A Notion-style editor, an infinite canvas, backlinks and sharing: documents that live inside projects instead of in a separate app.
- [Chat & collaboration](https://www.thetenon.com/features/chat): Real-time channels and DMs with reactions, attachments, page cards, polls, decision records and async standups.
- [Brain, the AI assistant](https://www.thetenon.com/features/ai): A floating assistant that knows your projects and tickets, drafts work for you, writes the morning briefing, and runs on the AI provider you choose.
- [Workspace insights](https://www.thetenon.com/features/insights): Portfolio health, resource heatmaps, C-suite metrics and an AI executive summary across every project in the organization.
- [Auth, security & SSO](https://www.thetenon.com/features/security): Row Level Security on every table, SAML and OIDC single sign-on, session control and activity logs, on Tenon Cloud or infrastructure you run.
- [Developer features](https://www.thetenon.com/features/developers): A public REST API with API keys, HMAC-signed webhooks with retries, custom fields and deployment self-tests.

## Solutions by industry

- [Software & product teams](https://www.thetenon.com/solutions/software): Sprints, specs, standups and an AI assistant that has read the codebase discussions, in one workspace. How engineering and product teams run releases on Tenon.
- [Marketing & creative agencies](https://www.thetenon.com/solutions/agencies): One isolated organization per client, approvals on the board, briefs next to the work, share links instead of PDF attachments. How agencies run on Tenon.
- [Consulting & professional services](https://www.thetenon.com/solutions/consulting): Engagements as projects, deliverables as pages, utilisation on a heatmap, and firm knowledge that survives when a partner leaves. Consulting on Tenon.
- [Healthcare & life sciences](https://www.thetenon.com/solutions/healthcare): Self-hosted work management for hospitals, clinics and health-tech: data residency, audit logs, SSO, and an AI assistant on a model inside your own network.
- [Education & research](https://www.thetenon.com/solutions/education): One platform for departments, labs and admin teams, each in its own organization, with student-data privacy controls, campus SSO and no per-department licences.
- [Non-profits & NGOs](https://www.thetenon.com/solutions/nonprofits): Grant cycles, programmes and volunteers in one free-to-start workspace, with funder reports drafted from the work itself. How small non-profit teams run on Tenon.
- [Government & public sector](https://www.thetenon.com/solutions/government): A sovereign, self-hosted workspace for public bodies: on-premises or national cloud, an organization per agency, SSO, audit logs, AI that stays in your network.
- [Architecture, engineering & construction](https://www.thetenon.com/solutions/construction): Design phases on a timeline, RFIs and submittals as tracked tickets, drawings and specs as linked pages, and site decisions pinned per project. AEC on Tenon.
- [Project playbooks](https://www.thetenon.com/playbooks): eight ready-to-copy project setups with board columns, custom fields, pages and rituals

## Blog

- [The real cost of the four-tool stack](https://www.thetenon.com/blog/the-real-cost-of-the-four-tool-stack): Jira, Notion, Slack and an AI tool each make sense alone. Together they quietly cost a 40-person team more than a full-time hire. Here is the arithmetic.
- [Self-hosting a team workspace: what you actually need](https://www.thetenon.com/blog/self-hosting-a-team-workspace-what-you-actually-need): Self-hosting sounds like a weekend of YAML. For Tenon it is a static folder, a Postgres database and a decision about where they live. A plain-language guide.
- [Row Level Security, explained for people who are not DBAs](https://www.thetenon.com/blog/row-level-security-explained-for-non-dbas): Multi-tenant apps usually protect your data with application code. Tenon asks the database to do it. Here is what that means and why it matters when a bug ships.
- [Why your AI assistant should run on a model you choose](https://www.thetenon.com/blog/why-your-ai-assistant-should-use-your-own-model): A workspace assistant is only useful if it can read your work, which is exactly why the model it talks to should be your decision, not the vendor's.

## Common questions

### What exactly is Tenon?
Tenon is one web app that replaces the usual four: a project tracker (boards, timelines, tickets), a documents tool (a Notion-style editor and an infinite canvas), a team chat (channels, DMs, standups, polls) and an AI assistant that has read all of it. Use it on Tenon Cloud, hosted by us, or host it yourself, including for many departments or clients on one deployment.

### Who is Tenon for?
Teams of five to five thousand who are tired of paying for and switching between Jira, Notion, Slack and a separate AI tool. Most start on Tenon Cloud. Organizations that cannot, or would rather not, put their work in someone else's cloud (agencies with client data, regulated industries, public sector, IT teams standardising internal tooling) run the same software self-hosted.

### Cloud or self-hosted: which should I choose?
Cloud if you want to be working in two minutes and don't have a rule about where data lives. Self-hosted if you have data-residency or air-gap requirements, or want to host one deployment for several departments or clients. It is the same product and the same database schema, so you can move between them later.

### Is Tenon open source?
Tenon is source-available. The self-hosted Community edition is free to run; Tenon Cloud is a hosted service on the same code. See pricing for what the paid plans and editions add.

### Why is it called Tenon?
A tenon is the tongue of a mortise-and-tenon joint, the oldest way to make two pieces of wood act as one, without nails or glue. That is what we want work to feel like: projects, docs and conversations that fit together instead of being bolted on. More on the name.

### What do I get on the Free plan?
A complete workspace for up to five members: unlimited projects, pages and messages, boards, timeline, hill charts, the editor and canvas, chat with polls and decisions, standups, the Brain assistant (with a provider you connect) and 2 GB of file storage. No credit card, no time limit.

### Where is my data stored on Tenon Cloud?
In the region you choose when you create the workspace: EU or US. Database, file storage and backups all stay in that region. Your organization's rows are isolated from every other customer by Row Level Security in Postgres.

### Can other Tenon Cloud customers see my data?
No. Tenon Cloud is multi-tenant, and every table has org-scoped Row Level Security policies. The database refuses to return rows that belong to another organization, regardless of what the application asks for. We run the same RLS self-test on Cloud that self-hosters run on their own deployments.

### Can I run several organizations on Tenon Cloud?
Each Tenon Cloud account is one organization, one isolated tenant. If you need many isolated organizations (for departments or clients), that is what the self-hosted Enterprise edition is for: one deployment you run, unlimited organizations, no per-tenant fees.

### Does AI on Cloud send my data to you?
No. Tenon does not run its own model. You connect the provider you choose (Google Gemini, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, or an OpenAI-compatible endpoint you host) and prompts go directly from your workspace to that provider under your agreement with them.

### Can I move from Cloud to self-hosted later, or the other way?
Yes. Both run the same database schema. Export your organization from Cloud and import it into a self-hosted deployment, or bring a self-hosted organization onto Cloud. Team and Enterprise customers get help with the move.

### What is the uptime commitment?
Business plans include a 99.9% monthly uptime SLA with service credits. Free and Team plans run on the same infrastructure without a contractual SLA.

### What do I need to self-host Tenon?
Two things: somewhere to serve static files (Nginx, Apache, Caddy, an S3 bucket, any static host) and a Supabase project, either Supabase Cloud in the region you choose, or the open-source Supabase stack running on your own servers via Docker. The install guide walks through both.

### Can I host Tenon for my departments or my clients?
Yes. That is what the self-hosted Enterprise edition is for. One deployment holds unlimited organizations, each fully isolated by Row Level Security, each able to connect its own SAML or OIDC identity provider. A superadmin role administers them all. Agencies use it for clients; IT teams use it for departments and subsidiaries.

### Does any data leave my infrastructure when self-hosting?
Only what you explicitly configure. Self-hosted Tenon makes no calls home and sends no telemetry to us. The one external call is to the AI provider you select, and if you point it at a self-hosted OpenAI-compatible model, even that stays inside your network.

### How does multi-tenancy work?
All organizations share one Postgres database, and every table has Row Level Security policies scoped to the organization. The database itself refuses to return rows that belong to another tenant, regardless of what the application asks for. A superadmin role can see across tenants for administration. There is a built-in RLS self-test you can run after deploying to prove isolation on your instance. Tenon Cloud runs on exactly this architecture.

### Can I run it on-premises with no internet?
Yes, with the self-hosted Supabase stack and a local OpenAI-compatible model (or AI disabled). Google sign-in and cloud AI providers obviously require outbound access; email/password auth does not.

### How do self-hosted upgrades work?
Deploy the new static bundle, apply the new database migrations, redeploy edge functions. The Enterprise edition includes upgrade support and migration notes for every release.

### Which AI models can I use?
Google Gemini via an API key, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, which covers OpenAI itself, Azure OpenAI, and self-hosted servers such as Ollama, vLLM or LM Studio. You enter a base URL, a model name and an optional key in Admin Settings. Nothing is hard-coded, on Cloud or self-hosted.

### What does the assistant have access to?
Brain reads the projects, tickets and pages the current user is allowed to see. RLS applies to the AI just like it applies to people. It can draft tickets for you to approve; it does not silently change data.

### What happens if I don't configure AI?
Everything else works. AI features show a clear "not configured" message instead of a fake result, and cron jobs that depend on AI skip gracefully.

### Do you support SSO?
Yes. Add SAML or OIDC identity providers per workspace from Settings, on the Cloud Business plan or the self-hosted Enterprise edition. A setup drawer gives you the copyable ACS URL, entity ID and redirect values your IdP needs.

### Can I see and revoke sessions?
Every user can view their active sessions and revoke any of them. Admins can review per-user activity logs.

### Is there an audit trail?
Per-user activity logs and webhook delivery logs are built in. Self-hosters also own the Postgres database and can stream its logs to whatever SIEM they already use.

### Do you have a DPA and security documentation?
Yes. Cloud Business and self-hosted Enterprise customers receive a data-processing agreement, a security overview and help with questionnaires. Ask for the pack.

### Is there a free version?
Two: the Tenon Cloud Free plan (up to 5 members, hosted by us) and the self-hosted Community edition (one organization, up to 10 members, on your infrastructure). Both include projects, pages, chat, standups and the AI assistant. The Free plan is a plan, not a trial.

### How is Tenon Cloud billed?
Per active member per month: Team is $10 and Business $18 billed annually ($12 and $22 month-to-month). An active member is someone who signed in during the billing month; deactivated users, public share-link viewers and API keys do not count.

### How are the self-hosted editions priced?
Community is free for one organization of up to 10 members. Pro is $6 per member per month (annual) for one organization with unlimited members, insights, API and SSO. Enterprise is priced per deployment, sized by the number of people served, with unlimited organizations. There are no per-tenant fees, so host ten departments or a hundred clients on one licence. Request a quote.

### Can I try before buying?
The Cloud Free plan is a permanent free tier, and Team comes with a 14-day trial. For self-hosted, the Community edition is the same code as Pro and Enterprise; a licence key unlocks the additional features without reinstalling.


## Optional

- [llms-full.txt](https://www.thetenon.com/llms-full.txt): this file plus the complete text of every article
- [RSS feed](https://www.thetenon.com/feed.xml): new articles
- [Sitemap](https://www.thetenon.com/sitemap.xml): every indexable URL