Setup channel lifecycle
The desktop app’s pinned #setup channel is the front door for a new HQ company. Four server-stamped cards walk an owner from an empty account to a first agent that replies in its own channel. Members can watch; only people with the right capability can act.
This is the path a brand-new client takes after signup. The console stays the admin surface for board, knowledge, policies, skills, workers, vault, and fleet.
The four cards
Cards are lifecycle_card messages (v1). The server sets them; clients cannot mint one through the ordinary message route. Each read is stamped with viewer.canAct. The same action posted twice with the same idempotencyKey returns the first result and does no second side effect.
| Step | Where | Card | Who can act |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Create company | #setup | create_company | The signed-in person |
| 2. Activate cloud | Company channel | activate_cloud | Owner |
| 3. Plan and billing | Company channel | upgrade_plan | Owner |
| 4. Create first agent | Company channel | create_agent | Owner, or a role with createAgents |
#setup also holds a companies_summary card after the first company exists. Opening a row jumps to that company’s channel.
Plan and billing
Companies created from 16 October 2026 are on usage pricing. There is no plan to buy: each account gets $10 of usage a month and a 30-day trial, and usage past $10 is billed by use. See Billing and usage. Starter and Workforce are closed to new signups. Teams that need contract terms book a setup call instead.
Agents are available on every account a la carte: self-run bots are free, and a hosted agent is billed per box and needs billing set up.
Companies that signed up earlier
Companies created before 16 October 2026 stay on their current plan until
19 December 2026, when existing plans move to usage pricing. Workforce (plan
id team, $500 a month) is closed to every company not already paying for
it, whatever the company’s creation date. Step 3 still lists Workforce, but
choosing it for such a company returns the card to a blocked state with the
refusal message; a Starter company’s next step is switching to usage
pricing. Companies already on Workforce keep it until 19 December 2026. Stay
on Starter is a real action (skipped). Creating an agent does not require
Workforce.
Starter is a hard-capped free plan, not a trial, and it is closed to new signups (since 16 October 2026). It covers up to 5 members, 10 secrets, 10 GB of storage and 3 connected integrations. Deploys are unlimited on every plan. MCP and Atlas are not included. Going over a capped ceiling locks the workspace read-only for creates until an owner trims back under it or upgrades; nothing is deleted.
Workforce removes the member, secret, storage and integration ceilings (all of them are unlimited on Workforce) and adds hosted MCP and Atlas.
First agent
Step 4 is optional and available on every account. No plan includes hosted agents: each hosted agent is billed per box at its size, from the first agent, and needs billing set up. Self-run bots are free. See Agent sizes and billing.
Agent channel
Submitting create-agent mints the agent and an invite-only company-scoped channel immediately. Setup finishes in that channel: a locked composer while the box is provisioning, then the agent’s first message. Agent settings live in the existing agent-detail side pane — there is no separate agent settings tab.
Company channel tabs
Each company channel header is Chat · Atlas · Team · Settings.
- Chat is the feed (lifecycle cards plus ordinary messages).
- Team is humans (roles and invite-by-email), agents (resize / remove / spend), and permissions (who can create agents, who can invite). Defaults: create-agents Owner only, invite Everyone. Members see values without controls. Removing an agent or changing an owner role is a second click in the row, never a modal.
- Integrations is not a channel tab. Apps are connected only in the HQ console, on the company’s Integrations page; in the desktop app, the company’s More → Integrations entry opens that page in the system browser.
- Settings is identity, plan and billing, cloud, and the danger zone. Wallpaper is stored on the company and drives the channel hero. Members see General read-only.
- Atlas is a read-only map of the company’s people and agents.
Everything an agent or a session can do (knowledge, policies, projects, branding beyond wallpaper) stays out of these tabs.
Who can act
viewer.canAct is computed per card. The action route enforces the same check (403). A member can sit in the company channel and see setup progress without being able to pay, invite, or create agents unless a permission grants it.
What this is not
- No per-company hosted owner agent.
- No rebuild of checkout or invoices in-app (Stripe hosted stays).
- The console is not removed.
- Setup-agent autocreate stays off.