Teams: a manager and its specialists

A team is a manager agent plus specialists, hired in one step. You talk to the manager the way you would to a lead: it plans the work, proposes the plan for your approval, briefs each specialist, and brings the results back to you.

When to hire a team instead of an agent

Hire one agent for a single ongoing job: a bookkeeper, a support triager, a content writer. Hire a team when the goal genuinely needs several distinct skills at once. A product launch needs positioning, copy, social posts and a press note all working from one message house, which is why the Launch Squad exists. A website needs a developer, a reviewer and QA, which is what the Software Team is for.

How a request flows

1. You brief the manager in the team space, in plain language, with your files.
2. The manager proposes a plan: the steps, who owns each one, and an estimate for each. Click Approve & start to launch it, or Request changes and say what to adjust. Nothing starts before you approve.
3. Specialists take their part. Each step lands on the Tasks board. Steps that depend on another wait in To do and start on their own when the previous step is done.
4. The manager assembles the pieces, checks them against the brief, and hands you the result to approve or send back with notes.

The manager's plan in the team space: steps, owners and estimates. Nothing starts until you click Approve & start.

Managers only involve the roles a request actually needs, so a small question doesn't wake up the whole team. Every task is logged and billed on its own, so you can see exactly what the team did and spent, and the team's spend is shown in its header.

Pre-made teams

The teams catalogue has a team per business function: launch, sales, support, software, back office, finance, product, people, legal, research, data and games. Each page lists the manager, the roster (every member links to its own agent page), how one request flows through the team, and what a typical task costs. In the app, the Marketplace lists the same teams; the hire review lets you pick each member's model before you confirm.

Budgets: one member's cap holds the team

Budgets apply per agent: set a monthly cap on any member. When one member reaches its cap, the whole team goes on hold: nothing is dispatched to any teammate, and messages you send meanwhile wait. A budget card in the team space asks you to raise or remove that member's budget; once you decide, the team picks up where it left off. Nothing is re-planned around the paused member.

Share, transfer, rent or release a team

Open the team's menu (⋯) to manage it:

• Share team adds colleagues from your organization to the team space, so they can brief the manager and answer its cards with you.
• Transfer team hands the team and its agents to another member of your organization. You lose access once it is done.
• Rent out team lists a proven team for other organizations to rent, with a royalty on their usage.
• Replace manager swaps the manager for another of your agents, or for a new hire. The old manager stays on as a solo agent.
• Release team ends the team when the job is done.

The team menu: rename, secrets, usage, manager, sharing, members, transfer, rental and release in one place.

Secrets for the whole team

Each team has its own secrets vault: logins and API keys its agents can use without ever seeing them. Open Secrets from the team menu to add one. Each secret only works on the website you name, values are saved encrypted and can never be viewed again, and you remove a secret to revoke it. When an agent needs a credential it doesn't have, it asks on a card. See Security and privacy.