Create a project

In short

Every project in TensorPM starts on the same screen: New project. What you type there decides which path TensorPM takes. Write a description or attach documents, and the AI drafts a first project context. Leave both empty, and you get an empty project plus a guided walk through eleven fields. Either way the result is a draft that you review before you work with it.

Project context means everything TensorPM knows about your project: goal, scope, success criteria, dates, budget, requirements, milestones, dependencies, and risks. The cleaner that context is, the more useful the later analysis and its suggestions become.

When you need this

• You are starting a new build, a renovation, or a fit-out and want the brief written down once, completely, before the first schedule exists.
• You have a project brief, a bill of quantities, or a quote as a PDF and do not want to retype the key figures.
• You are taking over a running project and first have to work out what was actually agreed.
• You only need a shell for filing documents and will add the context later.

The four paths at a glance

You reach the New project screen through the + in the tab bar above the view (tooltip Add new project). When no project is open, the start screen also offers the button Create New Project.

The screen has three inputs: a text box for the description, a paperclip for attaching files, and the project name field. The project name is required. Everything else is optional, and that is exactly how TensorPM knows which path you mean.

From a description

When it is the right path: You know what the project is, but it is not written down anywhere yet. This is the fastest route to a usable context.

What to prepare: A few sentences in your head or on a note: what gets built or delivered, for whom, by when, on what budget, and what is explicitly out. The text box takes up to 800 characters and counts them below the field.

How it goes: Type the description, enter the project name, click Create project. During creation you see progress across the fields being worked on. Then the project opens in the wizard overview.

What to check afterwards: Every number and every date. The AI fills out plausible detail from your short description, and plausible is not the same as correct.

From existing documents

When it is the right path: A reliable brief exists, or minutes from the kick-off, a quote, or a bill of quantities.

What to prepare: The smallest set of files that carries the facts. Two precise documents beat ten that contradict each other. Check beforehand that nothing from another project slipped in.

How it goes: Click the paperclip (Attach documents) or drag the files straight onto the text box. TensorPM reads them and shows Attachments: {{count}} below. View list & token details opens the per-file list and how much text each one contributes. You may add a description as well, but you do not have to.

What to check afterwards: Names, dates, amounts, and table rows against the original. For scanned documents, also whether the right text was recognised at all.

With the guided wizard

When it is the right path: The brief is incomplete, scattered, or contested. You want to think the project through deliberately instead of correcting an AI draft.

What to prepare: Time. Answering eleven fields honestly takes about half an hour. Have your confirmed dates and amounts at hand, and a note of what still needs clarifying.

How it goes: Enter only the project name and leave the description box and attachments empty. The button then reads Create empty project. After the click TensorPM asks back: Do you really want to create an empty project?. Yes, create empty project creates the project and drops you straight into the wizard with blank fields.

What to check afterwards: Less, because you wrote it all. Still confirm that dates and budget are in the right format and that the success criteria are genuinely measurable.

Empty, without the wizard

When it is the right path: You need a shell, for example as a place to file documents, and will add the context later. Or you want to build the context purely through the project agent in chat.

What to prepare: Nothing beyond the name.

How it goes: Enter the project name, then click Skip Wizard. Here too a question follows: Do you really want to skip the wizard and start empty?. Yes, skip creates an empty project that opens directly in the normal project view.

What to check afterwards: That you really do add the context. A project without goal, scope, and dates produces no useful suggestions, because there is nothing to compare the current state against.

Important: The difference between the last two paths is exactly one click. Create empty project opens the wizard, Skip Wizard does not. Both create a project with no AI content.

How to write a good project description

A good description answers five questions: What gets created? For whom? By when? On what money? What is explicitly out? If one answer is missing, the AI fills the gap with an assumption, and you have to find it later.

A complete example from a construction project

Renovation of the second floor of the office building Königstraße 17 while the building stays in use. The client is Hausverwaltung Königstraße GmbH, the contact is Ms Reinhardt. Included are tendering and award for drywall, electrical, ventilation, and flooring, site management, handover, and defect correction through the end of the warranty notification period. Excluded are furniture, IT cabling beyond the floor distribution box, and the facade. Completion by 15 November, handover to the tenant on 20 November. The date is contractually fixed; the construction budget of 620,000 euros net is an estimate and not yet backed by quotes. The floors below stay in operation, and at most two unplanned closure days are permitted. Success means: handover without critical defects, the agreed closure days held, and the final invoice within budget.

This description is long, but every sentence carries weight. It names participants, boundaries, one binding and one estimated figure, a constraint from continued operation, and three measurable success criteria. From this TensorPM can fill eleven fields without inventing anything.

A counter-example that is too thin

Refurbish second floor, fast and on budget.

Everything measurable is missing. The AI will still produce a complete project context, because that is what it is built to do. It will pick an end date, estimate a budget, assume trades, and phrase risks that fit an average refurbishment. None of it comes from you. If you do not check it field by field, you are working from day one with an invented project.

How to tell a description will hold up

• It names at least one thing that is not part of the project.
• It distinguishes confirmed from estimated.
• It contains at least one success criterion you can count or sign off.
• It names at least one person or organisation by name.
• It describes an outcome, not an activity. "Handover without critical defects" is an outcome, "build carefully" is not.

The guided wizard step by step

The wizard has two views: the overview with all fields, and the single-field view. You can switch between them at any time.

The overview as your starting point

At the top sit the project name and a progress bar reading {{filled}} of {{total}} complete. Open a card to edit it.. Below it the fields appear as cards, grouped into What the project is, Frame, and Substance. Fields with nothing in them collect at the bottom under Still open.

Each card carries a marker: a check for complete, Thin for too little content, Empty for nothing at all. For longer texts TensorPM writes a short summary onto the card and labels it AI summary. Change the text and the summary disappears until a new one is written.

Three buttons sit at the top right:

• Cancel leaves the wizard and asks first.
• Continue where it is thin jumps to the first field that is not yet complete.
• Open project ends the wizard and switches to the normal project view.

At the very bottom sits the Project folder block. That is the folder on your disk where TensorPM stores this project's files. You can change it here. Changing it does not move any files.

The eleven fields

The header shows Project Wizard and the current position as Step {{current}}/{{total}}:. The order is:

#	Field	What belongs in it
1	Project Description	Purpose, background, objectives as prose
2	Project Goal	The single outcome the project is measured by
3	Project Scope	What is included and what is explicitly not
4	Success Criteria	A list of measurable criteria
5	Timeframe	Start and end date
6	Budget	Amount and currency
7	Main Requirements	Table of requirement, description, priority
8	Technologies/Methods	Table of technology or method, description, category
9	Milestones	Table of milestone, date, description
10	Dependencies	External resources, teams, suppliers, approvals
11	Risks	Table of risk, impact, mitigation

Above each field sits a short hint. It changes depending on how the field came to be. If the field started empty, the hint is the question that helps you write. If the AI pre-filled it, the hint becomes a review question instead, for example on Timeframe: "Which date is actually fixed, and which is just an estimate?". That is deliberate. On a pre-filled field your job is not writing, it is adding what only you know.

Reviewing a field with AI

The buttons for the current field sit at the bottom right:

• Chat opens the project agent as a sparring partner for this field (tooltip Open Requirements Engineer Chat).
• Review sends the field content for checking. While it runs the button reads Reviewing…, and afterwards Reviewed.
• Back and Next move you through the steps. If the field is empty, the right-hand button reads Skip instead of Next. On the last step it reads Finish.
• On the left, Overview takes you back to the card view.

Review stays greyed out while the field is empty or no AI is set up. Without AI the tooltip tells you to connect TensorPM in the settings, through an account or local AI. The wizard itself works without AI; you simply get no review and no chat.

What the quality rating in the feedback panel means

After a review the Wizard Feedback panel appears. At its top right sits a rating labelled Quality. There are five levels:

Level	What it says
Excellent	The content is concrete, bounded, and checkable
Good	Solid, with small gaps
Decent	Usable, but vague in several places
Needs Improvement	Too general to base decisions on
Poor	Barely any content, or only statements of intent

Important: the rating judges the wording, not the truth. A completely invented budget with amount, currency, and rationale earns Excellent. A correct but tersely noted amount may only earn Decent. The level tells you whether a field carries enough to work with. Whether it is true is something only you know.

Below the rating are up to three sections:

• Questions to Consider: what the review cannot answer and you should clarify.
• Suggestions: concrete additions.
• Issues: contradictions or missing mandatory information.

Empty sections are not shown. Work through Issues first, then Questions to Consider. The Suggestions are offers, not a to-do list. You can edit the field and click Review again as often as you like.

Jumping back and changing things

The wizard is not a one-way street. You have three ways back:

1. Back moves one step back.
2. Overview takes you to the card view, where you can open any card you want.
3. Continue where it is thin jumps straight to the first incomplete field.

Your entries are saved as you move. You can also leave the wizard and pick it up later.

Finishing the wizard

Finish on the last step, or Open project in the overview, leaves the wizard and lands you in the project context on the Info tab. Nothing is lost if fields stay empty. You can edit every field later in the project context.

Cancel also ends the wizard, but asks first.

Documents as a starting point

Which file types are processed

Documents:

.pdf, .doc, .docx, .txt, .md, .xlsx, .xls, .csv, .ppt, .pptx

Images:

.jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .webp, .bmp, .tiff, .tif

Other file types are filtered out when you attach them. TensorPM tells you with the notice Unsupported files were not added: {{count}}.. If a supported file cannot be read, for example a password-protected PDF, TensorPM reports it individually and leaves the file out.

Limits: count and size

• At most eight documents per project creation.
• At most four images per project creation.
• At most roughly 80,000 tokens of text across all documents combined. A token is the AI's billing unit and corresponds to about four characters, so roughly 60 to 100 pages of prose.

If a limit is exceeded, TensorPM says so and the create button stays locked until you remove files. View list & token details shows how much each file contributes, so you can remove the largest one on purpose.

Very large images are left out when they exceed the AI's image budget. TensorPM reports that too, with the file names concerned.

What TensorPM takes from the documents

TensorPM reads the documents once in order to fill the eleven project fields. On top of that it recognises people mentioned by name, with organisation, role, and contact details, and creates them in the people view.

What TensorPM explicitly does not do

• It does not file the documents in the project. The documents are read for the creation and are not stored as project files afterwards. If you need them in the project, add them to Files afterwards.
• It does not create action items. Project creation produces no entries under Action Items. You derive those later, deliberately.
• It is not a binding import. There is no reconciliation with the original, no field mapping, and no error list the way a data import would have. It is a reading aid.
• It does not read folders. You pick individual files, not a directory.
• It does not repair bad scans. If a scan is skewed or faint, the field afterwards contains whatever the recognition made of it.

Everything the AI produces is a proposal

This is the most important section of this article. During project creation TensorPM produces a context that looks complete, even when your input was thin. Looking complete and being correct are two different things. Until you have confirmed the draft, it is a claim by the AI, not project knowledge.

The effort pays off: everything that follows, analysis, suggestions, dates, action items, builds on these fields. One wrong end date in the context produces wrong recommendations for months.

The review order

Work through the new project in this order. It is sorted so that the most expensive mistakes surface first.

1. Timeframe and Budget first. These are the two fields where an invented number does the most damage. Check every date and every amount against the original. Delete what you cannot evidence.
2. Project Goal and Project Scope. Is that your project, or an average project of this kind? Watch the exclusions in particular: the AI likes to add services nobody ordered.
3. Success Criteria. Every criterion must be countable or signable. Delete anything that only describes an intention.
4. Main Requirements, Milestones, Risks. These tables grow the longest. Cut them down. Twelve invented risks are worse than four real ones, because they hide the four real ones.
5. Dependencies and Technologies/Methods. Check that the named parties and methods actually occur in your project.
6. People. Open the people view and check names, spellings, organisation, and role of the recognised people.
7. Only then click Review project or derive action items.

Open Context for this and go through the sub-tabs Profile, Resources, Content, Planning, and Risks. The Info tab gives you an overview first of what TensorPM reads out of the draft.

How to spot an invented value

• Conspicuously round numbers with no source: 500,000 euros, twelve months, three milestones.
• Phrases with no counterpart: "the client", "the team", "the responsible authority", where your project would have names.
• Dates with no anchor in a contract, a permit, or a commitment.
• Risks that apply to every project: "delay through supply shortages", "budget overrun". They are not wrong, they are just empty.
• Detail you never mentioned in your input. That is the most reliable signal of all.

Whatever you cannot evidence, either delete it or write next to it that it is an assumption and who will confirm it. A marked assumption is usable. An unmarked assumption that looks like a fact three months from now is a problem.

What happens in the background

On creation TensorPM writes a project record into the local database and creates a project folder on your disk for files. If you write a description or attach documents, that text goes once to the AI provider you have set up, which proposes the eleven fields and the list of people. If you use the TensorPM proxy as your AI path, this consumes credits. With your own keys or a local AI, it runs through your provider.

A field Review is a single small call per click. The summaries on the overview cards are also written in the background, only for fields with longer text.

Without an AI provider the guided wizard, the empty project, and all normal project work keep functioning. Only generation, Review, chat, and card summaries fall away.

Common questions

Can I combine a description with documents? Yes, and that is the best path. The documents supply the facts, your description says which of them matter to you and what the documents are missing.

I cancelled the wizard. Is the project gone? No. The project exists as soon as it was created. The wizard is only a view onto it. Whatever you entered is waiting in Context.

Can I open the wizard again later? You edit the fields afterwards in Context. The same content lives there, just in the normal project view instead of a sequence of steps.

Do I have to fill in all eleven fields? No. You can skip any field. But expect the analyses to say less the more is missing. Project Goal, Project Scope, Timeframe, and Success Criteria are the minimum for a meaningful analysis.

The project name is wrong. Can I change it? Yes, later in the project settings. For creation it is just a required field.

Are my documents uploaded anywhere? That depends on your AI path. Through the TensorPM proxy and with your own provider keys, the text content goes to that provider. With a local AI everything stays on your machine. Details are in Account & AI Modes.

Can I create several projects at once? No, the screen creates one project. On the Trial plan one active project is possible in any case.

When something does not work

The create button is greyed out. Cause: the project name is missing, attached documents are still being read, or the attachments hold too much text. Fix: hover over the button, the tooltip names the reason. For too much text, open View list & token details and remove the largest file.

A file does not appear in the list after attaching it. Cause: unsupported file type, or the file could not be read, for example because it is password protected. Fix: check the file type against the list above. Re-save the PDF without a password, or provide the content as .docx or .txt.

Creation aborts with an error message. Cause: usually a missing or expired AI setup, no internet connection, or exhausted credits. Fix: check Settings -> AI, and check your credits in the account popover at the bottom left. Then try again. Your project name and inputs stay in place.

The fields are filled, but the content does not match my documents. Cause: too many or contradictory documents, or a document from another project was in the set. Fix: create a new project with the smaller, unambiguous selection and delete the failed one (Settings -> Danger Zone -> Delete Project).

Review cannot be clicked. Cause: the field is empty, or no AI is set up. Fix: enter content first. For AI setup see Account & AI Modes.

The summary on a card no longer matches the text. Cause: you changed the text and the new summary is still being written. Fix: wait a moment. Until then the card shows a placeholder or the start of the text.

I accidentally created an empty project instead of an AI-generated one. Cause: the description box and attachments were empty, so the button read Create empty project. Fix: either fill in the context by hand in the wizard, or delete the project and start again. Before larger restructuring it is worth using Create Backup under Settings -> General -> Database Backup.

Next steps

• Understand the resulting records: Project Structure
• Set up deliverables: Work Packages & WBS
• Have the reviewed context assessed: Suggestions & Order
• Derive action items from the context: Action Items
• Add files after creation: Files & Trail
• Set up your AI path and credits: Account & AI Modes