Smol review: Team drive with a chat in every folder, for sharing project files and context

What Smol does

Smol is a team drive that puts a conversation inside each folder. Instead of keeping recordings and edits in one tool and feedback in another, a project folder holds the files, the discussion, owners and statuses together. The vendor says it was built around podcast handoffs, where an editor needs the original, a teammate needs a quote and everyone needs to know the next step.

Folders can be nested. You can write documents, review revisions and share stable links. Search covers files, messages and processed content, including transcripts and OCR, and questions about files return answers with source citations. For uploads, Smol shares an adaptive budget of 1–4 parts across files and offers pause and checkpoint recovery. If a transfer breaks, you reselect the original and it carries on from the verified parts. Finished files can be used while imports and previews keep running.

Smol is available as a web app and as a Mac beta for Apple Silicon on macOS 12+, with Google sign-in.

That covers storage only, processing costs extra, and the page says billing is planned. The product is marked alpha: data may be lost, operators may read stored data, and files are unlisted public by default. Configured ceilings are 25 GiB per file and six hours of media, and processing budgets apply.

• Chat inside every folder
• Nested folders with owners and statuses
• Documents, revisions and stable share links
• Search across files, messages and processed content
• Transcripts and OCR with source citations
• Resumable uploads
• Adaptive multi-part uploads
• Web app and Mac beta

Our take

Smol suits small teams that pass large media files back and forth and want the files, the discussion and the next step in one folder. Cited search answers and resumable uploads are the clearest strengths described on the official pages. The trade-offs are serious. The product is labeled alpha, the vendor warns that data may be lost and asks users to keep backups, and operators may read stored data. Sharing is unlisted public by default, so private work needs the sharing policy changed. Teams that need firm pricing or guaranteed data safety should wait.