AI Employees

Anatomy

Every AI Employee row carries the fields you can configure from the UI plus a few the runner needs at spawn time:

name + slug

Display name (you can rename) and slug (frozen at create-time so URLs and directory paths stay stable).

role

A short role string — Brand writer, Bookkeeper, On-call SRE.

soulBody

Markdown stored on the row. The employee's constitution — see Soul.

skills[]

One-to-many Skill rows. See Skills.

routines[]

One-to-many Routine rows, managed from the top-level AI → Routines section. See Routines.

model

One or more AIModel brains, one active at a time. See AI Models.

reportsTo

Optional pointer to another employee for an org chart. Used for handoffs.

browserEnabled

Flips on the built-in browser MCP server that drives real Google Chrome. Off by default. See Browser.

browserAllowedHosts

Newline-separated host patterns limiting where the browser may navigate — github.com covers the domain and its subdomains. Blank means unrestricted.

browserApprovalRequired

When on, form submits queue an Approval a human must grant before the browser fires them. See Browser.

Lifecycle

1. Create. Pick a template (a starter Soul, Skill set, and sometimes starter Routines) or start blank. The slug freezes; you can rename freely afterward.
2. Attach a model. Pick a provider and authentication method. Anthropic takes an API key; OpenAI takes an API key or, on trusted single-tenant Genosyn, eligible ChatGPT subscription access; Custom takes an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. You can skip this and connect one later.
3. Write the Soul. Answer the short About questions, then review the seeded constitution and rewrite it to fit your team.
4. Review the Launch plan. Genosyn uses the role, chosen template, and company mission and vision to show dynamic Routine and Integration recommendations. Template-created Routines appear as Scheduled; new suggestions remain opt-in until you select them and choose either Add selected Routines or the primary Schedule N Routines and continue, which creates them and advances in one press.
5. Connect the work. Integration cards distinguish between Connect, Grant needed, Attention, and Ready. A Connection alone does not give the AI Employee access; it still needs an explicit Grant.
6. Fire. Deleting an employee removes their DB rows, including the encrypted credential row for every model they held. There's no shared key to revoke.

Working directory

Each employee gets their own folder on disk under the company:

data/companies/<co-slug>/employees/<emp-slug>/
└── ...   # files enabled coding tools read and write

Coding access depends on the installation mode. The default bubblewrap mode provides sandboxed bash and materializes repositories; where its Linux namespaces are unavailable, boot falls back to disabled, which exposes no coding tools and materializes no repositories. Separately acknowledged host mode provides path-confined file and search tools rooted in this directory (read_file, write_file, edit_file, list_dir, glob, and grep) but never exposes bash, because a working directory is not a security boundary for an unrestricted same-user shell. The runner captures the agent transcript into a Run log. API-key and custom models use Genosyn's in-process loop; OpenAI subscription models use the official Codex app-server. A Routine does not make its AI employee unavailable: Members can keep chatting with that employee and start independent Routines in parallel, up to the company workload limit. Concurrent work shares this directory when coding is enabled, so give overlapping Runs distinct output files and avoid simultaneous edits to the same git working tree. Model credentials stay encrypted in the database. They never enter the employee working directory. For an OpenAI subscription login or Run, Genosyn gives the official app-server a locked temporary CODEX_HOME. Managed ChatGPT sessions are materialized there; access tokens enter only the child process environment. Genosyn removes the directory afterward. Trusted single-tenant installs support subscription auth in the bubblewrap default, including standard Docker, alongside isolated coding and repository synchronization — and in the disabled fallback, with no coding tools or repository materialization. Host mode rejects subscription auth.

Org chart

Set reportsTo on an employee to give them a manager. Genosyn renders this as an org chart and surfaces it to the runner — useful when you want a Handoff from one employee to another to follow the reporting line.

Surfaces inside the app

• Chat. Free-form conversations with the employee. Messages persist; action pills surface tool calls inline. Type /new to open a fresh context, or # and a name to tag a product area or any company resource you can see. Use@ for people and AI Employees; # tells the employee what product or record to work on, and you can add several tags to one instruction. Attach files with the paperclip, or paste a screenshot and drag files onto the composer. When the employee creates a file for you, it appears beneath their reply; select the attachment chip to download it. During substantial multi-step work, the employee can replace the typing dots with a live, labelled progress bar and update it at meaningful milestones. The fill keeps moving between milestone updates so you can distinguish active work from a stalled connection without inflating the reported percentage. As soon as the reply begins, the progress bar gives way to the response. Long turns can run for up to six hours. If the live connection drops, you reload the page, or the Genosyn server restarts, Genosyn follows the persisted turn automatically instead of marking it failed. After a server restart, a short renewable database lease lets one replacement worker resume the request safely from its saved context and latest milestone; it checks current state before continuing so completed side effects are not repeated. The final reply reappears in the same thread. You can keep writing while the employee works — follow-ups queue and send in order. Chat stays available while that employee's Routines run.
  
  Under the composer, next to the model picker, Genosyn shows how full the model's context window is — the share of it the last turn's prompt occupied. The number comes from the provider's own token count for that turn, never a local estimate, and it updates as the employee works. Hover it for the exact figures. Past 80% it turns amber: the employee is close to the point where Genosyn starts dropping the oldest tool results to make room, which is the moment to finish the thread or type /new for a fresh context. If the AI Model has no known context window the badge shows the token count alone and links to the model settings, because there is no ceiling to measure against — see AI Models.
• Workspace. File editor scoped to the employee's directory — read what they wrote, edit it, drop in fixtures.
• Soul. The employee's constitution, under Settings. Markdown, ⌘S to save.
• Skills / Routines. Not employee tabs anymore — they live in the top-level AI → Skills and AI → Routines sections. Each sidebar link opens that list filtered to this employee.
• Connections. The list of Grants this employee holds.
• Journal. Append-only diary the employee writes about their own work via the built-in MCP server.