The short answer
A project in Whizi is a folder of conversations that also carries pinned files and its own custom instructions, and on every message in that project the instructions and the pinned file text are loaded and folded into the model prompt. Projects are available to any signed-in account, including the free tier. The per-project caps are abuse guards rather than a paid gate.
The caps published in the product:
| Limit | Value |
|---|---|
| Projects per account | 50 |
| Project name | 120 characters |
| Project instructions | 32,000 characters |
| Pinned files per project | 10 |
| Size of one pinned file | 10 MB |
| Extracted text used from one pinned file | 32,000 characters |
| Whole project prompt block | 120,000 characters |
| Projects a chat can belong to | 1 |
Two behaviors matter more than the numbers. Pinned file bytes are stored until you delete them, unlike chat attachments which expire. And project context is rebuilt into the prompt on every turn rather than once at the start, which is what makes a project reliable and also what makes it expensive in context.
What lives inside a project
A project carries three things worth understanding.
Conversations. A project is first a folder. Chats can be moved into it and back out of it, and a chat belongs to at most one project at a time, which is what makes the sidebar able to show a clean "everything else" view of the chats that are in no project. The sidebar lists projects above the chat list. Sidebar search matches chat titles and cuts across projects, so a chat stays findable by name whichever folder it is sitting in.
Instructions. A project carries custom instructions of up to 32,000 characters, applied to every conversation in it. This is worth stating plainly: per-project instructions are the only user-authored instructions in Whizi. There is no account-level custom instructions setting. Settings offers Subscription, Cancel, Reset password, Export data, Import chats, Default model, Dark mode, Language, and support and legal links, and nothing that sets a global instruction. If you want the same standing brief on every chat about one piece of work, a project is the mechanism.
Pinned files. Up to 10 files, each up to 10 MB, whose text rides along with every turn. These are not chat attachments and they do not behave like chat attachments, which is the next section.
Pinned files, and why images are not allowed
Pinned files accept PDF, plain text, Markdown, CSV, JSON, .docx and .xlsx. Images are deliberately excluded.
The exclusion is the clearest signal of what a pinned file actually is. A pinned file is not handed to the model as a file. Its text is extracted and rides along as prompt text on every turn in the project, so a format with no text to extract has nothing to contribute. An image attached to a single chat message is passed to a vision-capable model as an image and works fine; the same image pinned to a project would have to be re-sent on every turn to be of any use, which is exactly what the product declines to do.
That also explains the retention difference. Chat attachments and generated media are configured to expire after up to 30 days. Pinned file bytes are stored until you delete them, because a pinned file has to be available for every future turn in the project rather than for one conversation. The full storage picture is in where Whizi stores your data.
If a pinned file extracts to nothing, Whizi says so beside the file rather than letting you assume it worked: No readable text found in this file, so the model cannot see it. A scanned PDF with no text layer is the usual cause. The type, size and signature check failures on project files are covered in why a file upload failed.
How project context reaches the model
On every message, the project instructions and the pinned file text are loaded and folded into the model prompt. Not on the first message of a chat, not once per chat. Every message.
Two caps trim what gets folded in. Text extracted from one pinned file contributes at most 32,000 characters, and the whole project prompt block is capped at 120,000 characters. A project holding ten large PDFs is therefore not sending you ten whole PDFs on every turn, and the parts past the caps are simply not there. What the rebuilt block costs a long conversation is worked through in when the conversation is too long.
What this does not change is what a turn costs. A credit charge is the rung of the model that answered, so a message in a project costs the same credits as the same message on the same model outside one. Pinned files spend context, not credits.
What carries across a model change inside a project chat is covered in switch models mid-conversation.
The errors a project produces
Project management actions fail with their own strings, and they are worth recognising because each one names a different operation.
| Message | When it appears |
|---|---|
Could not create the project. Please try again. | Project creation failed |
Could not save the project. Please try again. | Saving the name or the instructions failed |
Could not delete the project. Please try again. | Project deletion failed |
Could not move the chat. Please try again. | Moving a chat into or out of a project failed |
Project not found. | HTTP 404, a project id that does not resolve for your account |
Project file not found. | HTTP 404, a file id that does not resolve inside the project |
Two rate limits are specific to projects, on top of the account-wide ceilings. Creating or editing a project is limited to 20 per minute, and uploading a project file to 10 per minute. Both are per minute, so the fix is to wait rather than to retry immediately. The wider picture is in rate limits in Whizi.
Upload failures on a pinned file are a different set of strings, including the 10 file ceiling and the 10 MB cap, and they live in why a file upload failed.
What a project is not
Four honest limits, because they are the questions people arrive with.
A project is not shared. There is no team, organization, workspace or seat concept in Whizi, and a project belongs to the account that created it. There is no member list on a project and no way to hand one to a colleague. See team accounts in Whizi.
A project is not an account-level setting. Instructions are set per project. A chat outside every project has no instructions at all, and there is nothing that applies a standing instruction across the whole account.
A project is not a second home for a chat. A chat belongs to at most one project, so a conversation that is relevant to two pieces of work has to pick one.
A project is not a prompt library. Instructions are one block of standing context for that project, not a set of saved, named prompts you pick from per message.
What a project does travel through is your data export. GET /api/account/export returns your account data as one downloadable JSON file, and its contents include projects and their file metadata. Read that precisely: the metadata, not the pinned bytes. See export chats and files.
Getting the most out of one
A few things follow directly from how the mechanism works.
- Pin the stable material, attach the volatile material. A style guide, a schema, a contract or a spec is worth pinning because every turn benefits. A one-off document you want summarised belongs in a single message as a chat attachment.
- Unpin what you are not asking about. Ten pinned files consume the project block on every turn whether the current question touches them or not.
- Choose the format before you pin, not after. The choice costs more on a pinned file than on a chat attachment, because the extracted text is re-sent on every turn rather than read once. What each format extracts to is in supported file types.
On a free account, projects, pinned files and instructions are all available. The constraint is elsewhere: a free account has a lifetime allowance of 7 messages, which never resets, so a project set up on free is really set up ahead of a subscription rather than something you can work inside for long.
- A project is a folder of chats plus pinned files plus its own instructions
- Available on any signed-in account, including free
- Up to 50 projects, each with up to 10 pinned files of 10 MB
- Instructions can be up to 32,000 characters
- Pinned files accept PDF, text, Markdown, CSV, JSON, .docx and .xlsx, never images
- Instructions and pinned file text are folded into the prompt on every message
- One file contributes at most 32,000 characters, the whole block at most 120,000
- Pinned file bytes are kept until deleted, unlike attachments which expire
- A chat can sit in at most one project
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a paid plan to use Projects in Whizi?
No. Projects are available to any signed-in account, including the free tier. The real constraint on free is the message allowance rather than the feature: a free account gets a lifetime allowance of 7 messages, which never resets, so you can build the project and pin its files but you will not get far chatting inside it.
How many files can I pin to a project?
Ten, each up to 10 MB. Accepted formats are PDF, plain text, Markdown, CSV, JSON, .docx and .xlsx. Images cannot be pinned, because a pinned file is sent as extracted prompt text on every turn and an image has no text to extract. An eleventh file is refused before the upload starts with This project already holds 10 files. Remove one first.
Are pinned files sent to the model every time?
Yes, every turn. Ten pinned files are re-sent whether the current question touches them or not, rather than being sent once at the start of a chat, so unpinning what you are not asking about is a real lever. Two caps trim what is sent: 32,000 characters of extracted text from any single file, and 120,000 characters for the whole project block.
Does a project cost extra credits?
No. A turn is charged at the rung of the model that answered it, so the same message on the same model costs the same whether it sits in a project or not. What pinned files consume is context rather than credits.
Can I set custom instructions for my whole account instead of per project?
No. There is no account-level custom instructions setting anywhere in Whizi, and per-project instructions are the only user-authored instructions in the product. A project is the mechanism: one standing block of up to 32,000 characters, applied to every conversation you file in it.
Can two people work in the same project?
No, and the nearest workaround runs per conversation rather than per project: a chat can be published behind an unguessable public link, and that public view is read-only and stripped of user ids, emails and internal fields. A colleague can therefore read one transcript that came out of the project, which is a different thing from working in the project. See team accounts in Whizi.
Do pinned files expire like uploads do?
No. There is no expiry window on a pinned project file: the bytes are stored until you delete them. Uploaded chat attachments and generated media are the ones with a clock on them, configured to expire after up to 30 days. The full storage picture is in where Whizi stores your data.