October 2026: the phone apps become Chats, Today and Rooms, and agents reach into your files

In October, Zunou moved its phone apps onto one shared foundation and gave them public names. It also put a new engine under Pulse, its built-in assistant, and let agents work in the files and mail people already use, under tighter controls. Everything below is merged code (UTC merge dates). It's in place, but not every piece may be in every user's hands yet.

Three phone apps, one shared kit, and public names. Through the first week, the mobile apps moved onto a single shared kit: one header, menu, workspace switcher, task sheet, settings pages, recorder and call screen, so a change lands in all three apps at once. The rooms app was rebuilt on that kit from the ground up. In it you can read and write a room's tasks, notes, tables and files, see its meetings, calendar and insights, record a meeting, and run a room's members and settings. On 7 October the apps took their public names: Zunou Chats, Zunou Today and Zunou Rooms, with new icons (and an icon choice in Today). From 8 October the downloads page sends iPhone users to Rooms on the App Store; at that point the page marked Chats and Today as coming to the App Store. Across the apps you can also join a workspace by QR code or invite link, with an owner's approval, and invite people to a single room. Talk gives you a voice conversation with Zunou AI about your workspace, and the call keeps running in a bar while you move around the app. iPad and wide screens got layouts of their own rather than a stretched phone view.

Pulse on a new engine, asked about the thing in front of you. On 1 October a new built-in AI engine for Pulse went in, and the old chat engine was removed the next day. Pulse buttons now sit on notes, tasks, meetings, insights and notices, so you can ask about that one item. Inside a room, Ask Pulse stays within that room. Pulse can also set up a workspace when you talk to it: invite people, create rooms, add members. Late in the month it gained two scheduling abilities: it can find a time when people in the workspace are free, and in a room or DM it books the event on the calendar of the person who asked.

Setting up a workspace, and its AI team, from a plan. A new builder under Workforce lets an owner draft the workspace as a plan: departments, rooms, and people (including from a file). An assistant sits beside the plan board. It suggests what's missing, can propose an agent team where there are gaps, and that team is hired by talking it through in Hire. A department lead gets a branch of the plan to shape for their own team. When people arrive, a personal helper and a Guide walk them through their first days. Home became a board of widgets that you, or your AI, can arrange, with pages of your own beside it. Workforce gained a Business view that shows the team as cards, next to the existing IT view. Agents also got room roles: a line saying what each agent does in a given room, set by people, by the agent itself, or by its HR agent.

Mail that does the job, with the person still sending. Mail in the desktop app was reworked across the month. Drafts now show when they're waiting for you and what changed since you last looked, with every version kept. Pulse in Mail drafts and suggests; the person sends. An agent may revise a draft a person started, but never discard or send it. The whole mailbox (labels and folders) can be read live in Mail, and HTML mails display as sent, with pictures only on request. On 20 October a set of changes merged that aimed Mail at day-to-day use in place of Gmail, and Zunou Today caught up with the desktop version by month's end. New mail can now wake an agent with access to that mailbox, and the agent can read the whole thread.

Agents in your files, on a tighter leash. Under a file grant from a person, agents can now read, write and download files in OneDrive and SharePoint (from 13 October), and work with and comment on files in Google Drive (from 19 October). The grants got finer through the month. A grant can be limited to one folder or library, made create-only, and edited later, and a connection can carry a per-tool allow-list. A workspace can connect a GitHub organisation once and give AI staff access to repositories one at a time. Owners can also bring in their Slack, with a planner proposing and the owner approving. Emails, calendar invitations, files and webhook posts now reach an agent marked as outside content, so it treats them as information, not instructions. A security and privacy center sits beside Workforce, with an overview of who can do what.

Help inside the product. Zunou Support arrived in phases from 19 October: a searchable handbook of answers in English and Japanese, which people, Pulse and agents can all use; a Help place in the dashboard; a request flow and a desk for Zunou's support team; and booking a session with a Zunou strategist.

Also landed: rooms read more like Slack: message runs under one header, reply in thread on any message, times on messages with day dividers, and busy rooms that open at the first unread. Other additions: "Notes to self", scheduled send for chat messages, and tasks that can leave the title blank for AI to write one from the details. The code went in for a prepaid AI balance as a fallback when a workspace's own AI account isn't available, behind a release gate. zunou.ai was rebuilt and gained a run of short tutorial videos.

What it adds up to (our read): October was about reach and finish. The same Zunou now runs across three phone apps, the desktop and the browser, and agents can get into more of a person's actual work (mail, files, code, chat), each step behind a grant that a person sets and can narrow.

Source: 77brainz/zunou-services, feature PRs merged 1–31 October 2026 (UTC dates). Merged ≠ live for every user. Evidence: Studio HQ table "zunou-services PRs merged Oct 2026".