Date: 2026-09-11

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What is Nova?

Start the course by understanding what Nova can do in a project and the safeguards that shape its work.

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Overview

Nova is Compass’s terminal-based AI agent for software engineering and productivity work. Instead of acting as a detached chat window, it operates from a working directory where it can inspect a project, reason about the surrounding code, use tools, make approved changes, and verify results. Nova is designed for real engineering workflows: unfamiliar repositories, long-running sessions, uncommitted work, multi-step implementation, and tasks that require evidence rather than plausible-looking answers.

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What Nova can do

A Nova session can combine conversation with concrete actions:
  • Search filenames and project contents.
  • Read files and inspect project structure.
  • Analyse dependencies and existing conventions.
  • Edit or create files with approval controls.
  • Run tests, linters, type checks, builds, and short-lived commands.
  • Inspect Git status, diffs, and history.
  • Prepare commits when explicitly requested.
  • Create implementation plans for complex changes.
  • Delegate bounded work to specialised agents.
  • Invoke reusable skills.
  • Connect to external systems through MCP servers.
  • Run lifecycle hooks around prompts, tools, agents, and sessions.
The important distinction is that Nova can inspect and change the same workspace in which the developer is working. Its answers can therefore be grounded in repository evidence rather than assumptions.

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How to think about the agent

A useful mental model is a loop:
  1. Understand the request — identify the intended outcome and relevant constraints.
  2. Gather evidence — search and read only enough of the project to act safely.
  3. Choose a workflow — answer directly, edit immediately, create a plan, or delegate specialised work.
  4. Act with tools — modify files, execute checks, or use connected services.
  5. Verify — compare the outcome with tests, diffs, diagnostics, or observable behaviour.
  6. Report — state what changed, what passed, and any real blocker or risk.
Nova is not merely generating shell commands for you to copy. Subject to the active approval policy, it can run tools directly and wait for their results before continuing.

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Guarded execution

Tool use is governed by an approval system rather than unrestricted access. Nova implements four approval modes:
  • Manual — asks before operations that require consent.
  • Auto — automatically approves eligible low-risk operations within configured thresholds.
  • Strict — requires approval even for lower-risk operations.
  • Smart — uses task complexity and risk to permit suitable direct work while retaining approval gates elsewhere.
Destructive or externally visible actions remain sensitive. Nova also provides an explicit /unleash mode for unguarded operation, but enabling it requires confirmation and may be denied by organisation policy. It should be treated as an exceptional mode, not the default workflow.

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Project awareness

Nova builds project context from several sources:
  • The current working directory and detected repository structure.
  • Project and global configuration.
  • NOVA.md instruction files and modular .compass/rules/*.md rules.
  • Project or personal skills and slash commands.
  • Available tools, agents, MCP servers, and hooks.
  • The current session history and saved memory relevant to the project.
This lets teams keep durable working conventions close to the code instead of repeating them in every prompt.

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Nova versus a general chatbot

A general chatbot can explain code pasted into a conversation. Nova can inspect the actual codebase, trace definitions and call sites, preserve local changes, perform edits, and run the repository’s own verification commands. That wider action surface is more useful, but it also makes precise instructions and approval controls more important.

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Effective use

Good requests describe an observable outcome and important constraints. For example:
That prompt tells Nova to investigate before editing, prefer a root-cause fix, and prove the result.

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What you learned

  • Nova works from your project directory and grounds its work in repository evidence.
  • Its workflow combines inspection, controlled action, verification, and clear reporting.
  • Approval policy remains in effect for sensitive operations.

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Safe practice exercise

In a non-production project, ask Nova to list the project’s main entry points and tests. Require it to cite files and not change anything.

Course overview

Return to the Nova 101 overview.

Next: How Nova works

Continue to lesson 2.