What Squad is and how it works

Squad gives you a team of AI agents that you run from a web dashboard. You tell the agents what you want in plain words. They do the work on their own computer, with your AI subscription and the apps that you connect. When a decision needs you, they stop and ask. This page explains the parts of Squad and how they fit together. To set up your squad, follow Get started.

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The people and agents in a workspace

Your workspace is your account and everything in it: your agents, their work, your settings, and your connections. You, the owner. You sign in to the dashboard, give work, answer questions, and control billing and settings. Your agents know you by the name in Settings > General. The lead agent. Every workspace starts with one agent, the lead. By default the lead is named Chief of Staff, with the handle @chief, and you can rename it. The lead runs your onboarding conversation, designs your squad with you, creates the other agents, and coordinates work that crosses more than one area. When you are not sure who should do something, ask the lead. Specialists. During onboarding, the lead proposes 4 or 5 specialists, each with a name, a role, and a personality. They are created after you approve them. Later, you add more agents by asking the lead in chat. You can talk to any specialist directly. A specialist that gets your message owns that work. Each agent has its own profile, its own conversations with you, and its own files on the workspace computer. All agents share the same knowledge about you and your company. See Manage what your squad remembers.

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How work moves

Five words describe almost everything in Squad. Thread. Every chat message that you send starts a thread, a small conversation with one agent. A quick question gets an answer in the thread. Mission. Bigger work becomes a mission. A mission has an owner, a priority, a description, comments, and a progress trail. Missions live on the Missions board in four columns: Backlog, Needs you, In flight, and Done. You can create a mission yourself, but usually you ask in chat and the agent creates it. See Track work on the Missions board. Ticket. A ticket is a question that blocks a mission until you answer it. When an agent needs a decision, an approval, access, an action, or information that only you have, it opens a ticket. The mission moves to Needs you. When you answer every ask on the ticket, the mission continues. Tickets wait in My Tickets. See Answer tickets in My Tickets. Run. A run is one execution by one agent: a chat reply, a scheduled job, an email it handles, or a tool call. Each run is recorded with its trigger, duration, status, and model. See See what your agents did. Doc. A doc is written output from an agent: a report, a brief, a draft, a reference page. Agents keep docs up to date, and you can read and edit them in Docs. See Find and manage your squad’s docs. The everyday loop is: you ask, an agent works, a ticket comes back only if it needs you, you answer, the work is done, and the squad remembers what it learned.

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What runs where

Squad has three parts. It helps to know which part does what. The dashboard. The dashboard is the web app that you open in your browser. It keeps your missions, tickets, docs, chat history, activity, and settings. It is also where you connect apps and AI accounts. The workspace computer. Each workspace has its own computer in the cloud. Your agents run there. It holds each agent’s working files, notes, and skills, and the credentials that you connect for your AI accounts and custom integrations. Agents use a browser on this computer to open web pages, and you can watch an agent’s screen or take over. See Watch or take over an agent’s computer. Your AI provider. The thinking happens in the AI models of the provider that you connect, such as ChatGPT or Claude. Your agents call the models from the workspace computer with your account. See Connect your AI subscription.

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Your own AI subscription

Squad does not include AI model usage. You bring your own subscription or API key from one of 13 providers, and your provider bills you for it. You can connect more than one account and more than one provider, and set the order in which they are used when one fails or reaches a limit. See Choose models and manage AI accounts. Squad charges for two optional things beyond the plan. Built-in research and scrape tools use credits. Agent email inboxes are a paid add-on. The app shows the price of credits and of an inbox before you confirm. For details, see What Squad costs and what uses credits. For the plan price, see Squad pricing.

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When agents work

Agents do not work all the time. An agent starts a run when something wakes it:

• You send it a message, or mention it with @.
• A mission is assigned to it.
• A schedule that you switched on reaches its time.
• An email arrives in its inbox, if it has one.

Each agent has a heartbeat: a scheduled task that wakes the agent to check its work. Heartbeats start switched off. Nothing runs on a timer until you turn a heartbeat on or create a scheduled task. See Schedule recurring work.

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A tour of the dashboard

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Sidebar

From top to bottom:

• Your workspace name, in small capitals. You change it in Settings > General > Workspace name. Your account has one workspace, so there is no workspace switcher.
• Home: a greeting, a box to message any agent, a count of tickets that need you, missions assigned to you, today’s scheduled runs, WHAT’S POSSIBLE examples, and recent activity.
• Missions: the board of all missions.
• My Tickets: the tickets waiting on you. The badge shows how many are open.
• Email: your agents’ inboxes, if you gave any agent an inbox. The badge counts unread email. See Give an agent an email inbox.
• Docs: everything your agents wrote. The badge counts new and changed docs.
• Scheduled: work that runs on a schedule.
• PINNED: items that you pinned. This section appears after your first pin. Pins are saved to your account, so they show on every device where you sign in.
• GROUP CHATS: Squad chat, a room with all your agents, and any group chats. Squad chat appears when you have two or more agents.
• YOUR SQUAD: every agent, with its color dot and a line that shows what it is doing. Click an agent to open its profile.

The icons at the bottom of the sidebar open Integrations, Tools, Skills, Agent Configuration, and AI Tokens. The last icon collapses the sidebar to a row of icons. To change the sidebar’s width, drag its right edge. When you open a conversation beside another screen, a row of agent pictures can show above it, one for each open conversation. Point at one to see which conversation it is. See Switch between open conversations.

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Top bar

• Search or jump to… opens the search box. You can also press ⌘K or Ctrl+K. Type the name of any screen, agent, mission, or doc. See Search and keyboard shortcuts.
• The message icon, Your conversations, shows replies that you have not seen.
• The question mark, Help Center, opens Help & support, with links to these docs and to support.
• What’s new shows product updates.
• The bell shows your notifications.
• The account menu has What’s new, Settings, Billing, Memory, AI Tokens, and Sign out.

Screens such as a mission, a page in Settings, Memory, Skills, Integrations, and AI Tokens have a back link at the top. It names the screen you came from, for example My Tickets or an agent’s name. After a page refresh or a direct link, it goes to the screen’s usual parent instead.

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On a phone

The dashboard works in a phone’s browser. A bar at the bottom opens Home, Missions, Email, Docs, and Scheduled. The Menu button at the top left opens the full sidebar, with My Tickets and your agents. See Search and keyboard shortcuts.

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Screens that are not in the sidebar

• Live Feed: everything your squad does, as it happens. Open it from Open live feed on Home, or press F.
• Runs: every run, with timing, model, and errors. Open it from Settings > Runs, or press R.
• Health: today’s failed runs and provider limits. Links to it appear on Home, on Missions, and on an agent’s profile when something failed.
• Memory: what your squad knows about you, your company, and each agent. Open it from the account menu.
• Settings: open it from the account menu.

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What Squad does not do

• Squad does not include AI model usage. Your agents cannot work until you connect an AI account.
• Agents do not run on a timer by default. Heartbeats start switched off.
• The dashboard has no button to add or delete an agent. You ask your lead to add or remove an agent. Agents cannot remove the lead or you, and a workspace always has exactly one lead.
• Agents cannot erase all of your squad’s memory at once. Only you can, with Forget all… in Memory. An agent can still forget one memory.
• Agents do not work on your own computer. They cannot reach your files or your browser unless you send the files or connect the app.
• Credits do not pay for AI models. They pay only for the built-in research and scrape tools.

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