Questions, answered plainly.
- What problem is Novus actually solving?
- Novus reduces information latency. What was a series of emails, meeting, phone calls could be summarized into one message. In other words, Novus is the execution-change control layer between the master schedule and the people producing operational information.
- Why doesn't the board tell me what's at risk?
- Novus is designed to amplify high-autonomy teams. The schedule is just their Map, but the Focus Index is what gains their attention on the day-to-day.
- If someone files a Status, does my schedule change?
- Messages sent as a Status don't immediately change the schedule. They are reviewed by admins first.
- Does Novus ever move my schedule without me?
- Not the moment anything is reported. Overruns and recoveries both wait on a card until someone accepts them, and each Project Page chooses what happens to the ones nobody touches: applied after a set number of days, applied immediately, or never applied automatically. Never is a real setting.
- Who can see my team's work?
- You see your own team's work in full. Work one hop across your team's boundary shows as a faded preview, named but read-only. Anything further away isn't shown at all.
- Can I give an inspector or supplier access without adding them to everything?
- Yes — that's what an External Collaborator is. They see one activity and its immediate neighbours, not your board or your team's chat, and they never take up a member seat.
- Does it work on a phone?
- Not yet, and deliberately. You can read this site and create an account on a phone, but the boards, chat and panels are built for a laptop screen and are not usable on one — a schedule needs the room. A native phone app is designed and is where phone support will land; until then Novus is a desktop product.
- Where are the dashboards and analytics?
- On Metrics projects. Each has Studio — floors of the process, run to see where work waits — Operations, with Review, Monitor and Log, and Analytics, on the project's own files. Build them by hand, or ask Guided and it builds them with you. They measure the work: rejects, waste, time per unit, what to stock, how many people an hour. What isn't in Novus, on purpose, is a scoreboard of people. Measuring individuals is a separate product, MetricsOS, kept off the board so the board can't turn into one.
- We want weekly or monthly reviews, but don't have the data in yet. Can we start?
- Yes. Guided can draft a review from a description of the business — its items, places and a typical day — as synthetic data, labelled Synthetic on every page. When the real files arrive, the same review fills from them, and it says so.
- How do I know where a number came from?
- Every figure in Metrics names the data behind it — Actual, Synthetic or Simulation — and only Actual readings raise a signal. Layers lists the files and rules a page stands on. A review presentation puts a source line on every page and ends with its assumptions and the method behind each exhibit.
- Can I hand a review to someone outside Novus?
- Yes. A review presentation downloads as PowerPoint, PDF, or a spreadsheet of its figures. It opens with a summary, gives each question its own page with the source underneath, and keeps the assumptions and method at the back. The PowerPoint uses real slide layouts and editable charts, so it takes your own template.
- Is there a demo I can look around?
- Yes — a fictional bakery run on Novus, with its operation, its projects and a construction job. It's read-only, so nothing you do changes it, and its Guided conversations are recorded ones. Your own files and live Guided come with an account.
- Is there a guide?
- The User Guide shows each part of Novus in one picture — what Metrics reads, who sees what in a shared project, and the schedule on the building — with the words you'll meet on screen.
- Why is there no time tracking?
- Because counting hours rewards looking busy over getting the work right. Once a timesheet is the measure, people learn to fill the timesheet, and the work that's hard to count — checking, helping a teammate, raising a problem early — gets less of their time. Novus follows the work itself instead: what's done, what's waiting and on whom, what moved and why. Nobody has to account for their day. If you bill by the hour, keep the time tracker you have; Novus isn't trying to replace it.
- Can I use Novus without the AI?
- Yes. Turn AI off for the whole workspace in Settings, or for one project from its menu, and nothing from it is sent to a model. Everything that isn't a model call works as before — the engines, Studio, Review, the exports — and Guided still checks your files, worked out in code. Or keep AI on and simply don't use it: turn off status suggestions and build the schedule by hand rather than with Plan AI.
- Does my project data go to AI companies?
- Some of it, when you use a feature that needs a model, and the amount is bounded. Novus AI, Guided, Plan AI and Talk to Novus run on Anthropic; message screening runs on OpenAI, so message text is sent there to be screened. A spreadsheet is never sent — only an excerpt, at most the first 15 rows of up to 3 sheets, 14 columns wide; a plain-text Read-me is sent as it is up to 16,000 characters. Everything else a model is told about your records is worked out in Novus first. Neither company trains on data sent through its API. Turn AI off for a workspace or a project and nothing from it is sent. /trust spells all of this out.
- How much storage do I get, and what happens to archived Project Pages?
- Not decided yet. Archiving itself is free today; a real storage policy is coming before it needs to be.
- Can I get my data back out?
- Each board exports its schedule as a CSV; Metrics pages and reviews export as CSV or Excel, and presentations as PowerPoint, PDF or a spreadsheet. A fuller account-wide export isn't built yet.
- What happens to my data if I cancel?
- It stays recoverable for 30 days, then it's deleted for good, backups included. One caveat worth saying: nothing in Novus ends a paid period yet, since no payment provider is wired up, so no timer is running against this today — the 30 days is the commitment.
- Where is my data hosted, and can I choose a region?
- In the United States — Neon's managed Postgres in Northern Virginia (AWS us-east-1), with the API beside it. You can't choose a different region yet: there's one, and it's this one. For customers in the EU and UK, holding your work there is a transfer out of Europe, made under the EU Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK Addendum in our data processing agreement. If your data has to stay in the EU, ask before relying on Novus.
- How often is it backed up, and how far back can you restore?
- That depends on which Neon tier we settle on, which isn't chosen yet — so it isn't answered honestly until it is.
- Are you SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certified?
- No, not yet. An independent audit is on the roadmap; until then, /trust lists what is in place and what isn't, each read out of the code.
- Do you offer SSO or SAML?
- No, not yet.
- Is there a DPA, and are you GDPR-ready?
- Terms, a Privacy Policy and a DPA are drafted but not published: no lawyer has read them yet, and two things in them are undecided — the legal entity and the governing law (the hosting region and the 30-day retention are decided). If a signed DPA is a requirement for you, ask before you commit a team; the draft exists, so the answer is about timing.
- Can I self-host?
- No — Novus is hosted, not something you run yourself.
Something not covered?
Novus is early enough that a real person reads every message. The data, hosting and procurement answers above are set out at more length on Trust.