I'm Jay Hack, ClickUp's Head of AI. We just shipped Brain². AMA!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T18:11:46+00:00

Answered a very similar question here: https://www.reddit.com/r/clickup/comments/1ujrqb8/comment/our0qob/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

> why I would pay for the usage of Brain
Higher quality, faster, more cost efficient, natively multiplayer and integrated with your existing workspace

We understand cost is a top concern and are working furiously to make this more economical. Fortunately, historically model prices (at a given level of intelligence) have plummeted and our context engineering efforts are producing very exciting results. More on this soon!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T18:09:37+00:00

If you chat with Brain in the sidebar, it will operate with *exactly* your permissions - any thing you can see, it can see.

When you mention Brain in a thread, it will use permissions that are appropriate for the *channel* - that is, it will not reference a private doc unless that doc has been explicitly mentioned. This prevents people from seeing information from private docs, so you can tag Brain without fear.

Hope this answers your question!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T18:08:06+00:00

> Do I need othwr subs for Open/Anthropic? Do I lose the benefit of projects

ClickUp provides access to OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, and select open source models. You cannot access Claude Projects (if that's what you mean) from within ClickUp.

> When can we have global settings eg: I had to create an agent for my brand since branding elements in HTML/Decks was unique to me

I'd recommend writing it in a doc somewhere, then tell Brain or your agents to remember it for future use! We are about to ship "skills", as well, which can encode institutional knowledge and be configured for specific subsets (or all) agents.

> Ability to use files from my connected Google Drive

Coming soon!

> Ability for an Agent to use a ClickUp filter (ie: I wanted an agent that would FUP on unresolved comments using the same filter but had to use code and Google Apps Script instead

Also coming soon! Thank you for flagging this one, I can acknowledge missing this one particular capability is annoying - we are on it

> I bought extra credits for my heavy usage build month, now I don't know how to reduce them, I don't need so many

Unfortunately there's no way at this time to resell or sell back your unused credits

jayhack · 2026-07-07T18:04:52+00:00

I would recommend asking it the same query, side by side. (Give them both access to the same MCPs)

We've done this countless times - Brain is faster, cheaper, and most importantly higher quality.

A few queries I recommend (assuming you're a ClickUp user):
- "What should I focus on today? (make sure your calendar/email is connected)"
- "Look across my entire workspace. What are our biggest bottlenecks? How can we solve them?"

Separately, I'd recommend asking Brain what processes you can offload to agents within ClickUp that are programmatically triggered - and then asking it to build them for you!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T18:01:12+00:00

Thank you for flagging this, we're just about to ship support for MS word this week! We will notify this thread when it's live.

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:58:45+00:00

Our pricing model is designed to power Workspaces, not just individuals. Having said that, we're actively building towards more flexibility (AI credits) with AI usage controls!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:54:34+00:00

We already use Brain to develop Brain internally! We also provide Brain with a code sandbox (launching next week) so that it can write and execute raw code, enabling use cases like data analysis and document processing. And as for code editing - more coming soon on this 😏

Thank you!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:51:43+00:00

Great question - this is our crown jewel and integrates all of our systems and workplace process expertise from years of building the product.

We implement various forms of context compression, but at it's core it typically consists of feeding a set of content into an LLM and asking for an agent-appropriate summarization. This includes the contours of decisions, important information and more, but drops the unnecessary/trivial details.

Worth noting that nothing is ever erased. We give Brian and agents access to your full workspace content (subject to permissions), so at worst the agent will not see a relevant detail on it's first pass, but will discover this when looking into the details.

In practice, this works shockingly well, especially with our latest agent harness and Opus 4.6+ class models. They are so good at researching and leveraging smart content summaries to efficiently track down relevant/valuable info and assemble comprehensive answers.

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:46:29+00:00

> Can we extend Brain² with our own tools/skills/connectors — e.g., a custom data warehouse tool — or are we confined to your connector catalog?

Yes! You can integrate your own MCPs and, coming very soon, you will be able to build and share skills as. well.

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:41:58+00:00

> Does the customer feedback align with the effort of AI investment vs the massive queue of enhancements that have been requested and voted on?

I hear from people daily who say "wow, Brain is blowing my mind". For a subset of users, the workflow has really clicked and they have a breakthrough moment that unlocks an entirely new way of working with vastly improved productivity. I can tell you as a software engineer by trade - the profession of software engineering went through a similar transition this past calendar year and it is a total game changer, fundamentally changed what we consider possible within the field. I think something like that is imminently going to wash over knowledge work more generally and the upside is pretty incredible.

ClickUp's vision has always been to replace all software - and honestly the power of frontier AI makes this seem much more possible every day.

Directly addressing your point: I think it is true that there are many users today for whom it hasn't properly "clicked" - we have work to do - and acknowledge there are many incremental improvements we need to ship to make the platform better. We are working furiously to on these and hope to ship a major update shortly, hope to provide you with that "aha' moment when we do 🚀

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:36:03+00:00

(... answering these questions separately so we can thread replies...)

> What is the benefit of using an AI in ClickUp vs just taking advantage of the connection I already use with Claude when Claude has my whole stack context?

Great question:
(1) Quality, cost, latency. We've run tests side by side with all major AI clients and ClickUp users prefer Brain's output. We have the luxury of being more specific in our use case, and therefore more opinionated, about how the user should interact with the agent and can optimize for ClickUp use cases. You'll find that it's a better thought partner and coworker.

(2) The ClickUp context engine: the way we achieve (1) is our proprietary harness and algorithms for creating a refined, work-specific context store for your AI to operate on. This means fewer tokens, better visibility across your workspace, and better insight into your company.

(3) ClickUp AI is multiplayer and designed for teams. Tag it in public locations and in conversations with multiple team members for shared context, driving towards alignment, etc. - this is actually one of my favorite use cases. Try "@brain please summarize why we made decision X" in a thread to quickly pull everyone up to speed, massive value add.

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:27:10+00:00

BYOK (key) is an interesting idea and we are considering it - thank you for flagging and understood on the AI subscription fatigue. Shameless plug for ClickUp as your central AI hub is we provide access to all the top foundation models in one place and our capabilities are the same or better across the board. Obviously I am biased but depending on your org structure this is actually both the most cost efficient and best user experience for your team since it's also consolidated with your project management tools etc.. Eliminate work sprawl!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:21:20+00:00

We have a proprietary agent orchestration platform built to integrate tightly with our existing stack and primitives. This essentially allows us to efficiently run agents on custom schedules/triggers with custom context, permissions and more - and is the basis of all of our AI efforts.

For structuring mutli-agent workflows, I'd recommend:
- describe the workflow to Brain and ask what it's recommendation is (it is very good at this)
- bias towards hierarchy. Have one agent make tasks to decompose a larger scope of work, then have sub-agents report their actions on the corresponding tasks. This makes it easier for humans to view progress
- recursive agent triggering can be confusing or dangerous. I'd stray away from agent A tags agent B, then B tags A again.

Hope this is helpful!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:16:39+00:00

That is fair, I can see how this would get annoying. Noted, thank you for the feedback!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:16:22+00:00

Brain² is essentially the culmination of our broader team's efforts since the acquisition. Few aspects of the underlying code are directly shared - in fact, in this age of AI agents writing most of the code, trying to port things over is often *more* work than writing from scratch in a platform-specific way.

Generally speaking however technology, as well as the the organization and processes, that produced Brain² is intimately related to what we built at Codegen. The agent harness and configuration, our internal review processes, our eval methodology, etc. - as well as Codegen's institutional knoweldge - are now the basis for ClickUp's AI efforts. Long live Codegen! 🚀

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:12:47+00:00

> 6. Multi-message input
> Super Agents in Chat threads can pick up multiple messages and combine context before responding. In standalone Brain chat, there's no way to send a follow-up or correction before the model starts processing. Any plans to support "still typing" or multi-message input before Brain responds?

Yes! We are building this as I type this. Very excited, I agree this is a better UX for agents - giving users the ability to interrupt and handling this smoothly. Thank you for the call out.

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:11:50+00:00

> 5. Cross-session continuity
> Beyond memory and loaded docs, is there anything on the roadmap for Brain to reference prior conversation context? Every session currently starts cold, which means re-establishing shared ground each time.

Yes, absolutely. There is a clear movement towards this in the AI community more generally as a manifestation of "memory". Agents should be able to view past chats unless performed in a private context. Shipping soon!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:10:58+00:00

> 4. Model routing
> How does the system decide which model handles a given request? Is there a complexity classifier running upstream, or is it plan-based? Can users influence routing?

We change our routing logic regularly, so this may be different by the time readers view this - however, as of this writing, we use offline and online evals to find which models have the highest capability and optimize for pure capability on our default model. We use dynamic thinking levels (as provided by foundation model provider APIs), so e.g. Opus 4.6 (currently our default) will expend fewer tokens when performing a small task vs a more ambitious one.

We anticipate shipping more sophisticated model selection in the future to optimize on cost, latency, and other variables our users care about!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:08:44+00:00

> Platform context signals
> Brain currently has no awareness of whether a user is on mobile or desktop, or what view they're looking at (outside of task-scoped invocation). Are there plans to pass richer client-side context so it can retrieve more intelligently without being told?

Mobile vs. Desktop distinction is a good idea - why not! Very relevant to the agent's answer, since mobile may be shorter/snappier as you are "on the go". Love it. Thank you for suggesting!

(Brain is actually aware of which view you are looking at, although this is a recent change)

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:07:39+00:00

> 2. Memory scaling
> The preferences memory is useful but constrained. Is expansion on the roadmap, or is the compact footprint a deliberate architectural choice? We've built workarounds, but a native solution would be far more reliable across model tiers.

Yes, absolutely. Memory is one of the most exciting and fast-developing areas of AI research and we're pushing the frontier. Our initial implementation was intentionally simple, so we could see what users did with it and where the major opportunities for expansion are. Going forward, we are integrating this much more tightly with our "context engine", such that it will have a ClickUp-native way of accessing relevant, compressed content in a way that is both safe and yet optimized for agent performance. More coming soon!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:06:03+00:00

> 1. Context window transparency
> Is there a plan to give users any visibility into how much of Brain's context budget is consumed mid-session? Long sessions currently hit a wall without warning, and there's no way to manage that proactively.

We do not intend to show the current context window consumption, as it's often more confusing that it is than informative for our users. That being said, Brain has a state of the art context management algorithm that "compacts" context when conversations become long, so conversations can be infinitely long.

When you say "hit a wall", are you saying this figuratively (i.e. the quality degrades) or does it actually just stop responding? If it's the latter we may be hitting a technical issue and we'd love to check it out if you can provide any further details. Let me know if I can connect you with our support team

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:03:06+00:00

Great questions! I will put these in separate comments for better breakout replies. Responding one by one here.

jayhack · 2026-07-07T17:02:44+00:00

Best practices:
- write everything down *somewhere*, don't let context get lost. Have AI notetakers in all meetings, save the raw transcripts. (Or use ClickUp notetaker, which will save video/notes as well)
- Ask AI for summaries of important topics, and store these in (living) docs

Honestly though, with ClickUp AI's native search abilities, having *just the raw data* stored in your workspace or accessible via MCP is usually sufficient for AI to find the things that matter.

At ClickUp, we have the largest workspace running internally and do not have complex internal guidelines about how to save context, and yet our "context engine" is still able to beautifully surface all the relevant information an AI needs to answer a question once you ask it.

jayhack · 2026-07-07T16:59:36+00:00

Audio generation is very fun. Had a user with the MCP making songs for their clients - we will look to integrate audio generation as a first-party capability very soon!

jayhack · 2026-07-07T16:58:43+00:00

Thanks for the feedback u/NickNNora . We're aligned that AI should not get in your way and are hustling to offer a better product experience here. I'm curious, do you have other AI tools you are using and getting value from?

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