Kortix

The open-source AI Operating System

The leading open-source alternative to Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work.

Website · Documentation · Cloud · Manifesto

Agents that deliver finished work — reports, decks, code, replies, deployed changes — are now a product category. Every version of it runs inside a model lab, on that lab's model, with your company's brain on their side of the wall.

Kortix is the one you own. It's an open-source AI Operating System: your agents, the skills they share, your company memory, and every connector live in one git repo — versioned, diffable, and shared by the whole company. The agents work on real cloud computers — an isolated sandbox per session, on its own branch — and land what they produce through a change request a human approves.

Any model, your own API keys, your own infrastructure or our managed cloud.

• ✅ You want an open-source, self-hosted alternative to Claude Cowork or ChatGPT Work for your whole team → details
• ✅ You want AI agents in Slack or Microsoft Teams that use your tools and reply in the thread → details
• ✅ You want background coding agents in the cloud: a sandbox and a branch per task, and a change request you review → details
• ✅ You want to replace Zapier-style automations with AI agents that run on a schedule or a webhook → details
• ✅ You want an "AI employee" that does the work and waits for a person's approval before it acts → details
• ✅ Your security team needs governed agents: per-tool rules, approval gates, an audit trail, SAML SSO, your own VPC → details
• ✅ You want an AI Operating System to run a company with agents: every agent, skill, memory file and connector in one git repo → details

Kortix is probably not the right fit if you want a visual flowchart of fixed steps (a workflow builder such as n8n does that well), or only a chat window over your documents (Onyx, Open WebUI or LibreChat).

Competitor rows reflect publicly documented behavior as of July 2026.

Three commands. Build your company like a codebase, then bring it live.

# 1 · Install the CLI
curl -fsSL https://kortix.com/install | bash

# 2 · Scaffold a project — creates kortix.yaml + your agents, skills and runtime config
kortix init

# 3 · Ship it — pushes your repo and brings the whole thing live in the cloud
kortix ship

That's the loop. From here:

kortix sessions new --prompt "Summarize this week's commits and open a change request"
kortix cr ls          # review what an agent proposes — merge to keep it
kortix chat           # talk to a session's agent from your terminal

Prefer zero setup? Sign up at kortix.com, create a project, and start a session — nothing to install. Full command surface: CLI reference.

Not as a metaphor — literally something you can clone. Inside it: your agents, the skills they've built up, the way the work actually gets done, every fact the company has learned, and the definition of the machines it all runs on. Versioned. Diffable. Owned outright.

project  (git repo + kortix.yaml)
   └─ session ──> cloud computer: an isolated sandbox on a branch named after the session
                     └─ the OpenCode agent works
                           └─ change request ──> you review & merge ──> main

• Every session gets its own cloud computer — a disposable, isolated Linux sandbox on its own branch. The agent can install, run and break anything; only what it commits survives.
• Work reaches main only through a change request you approve, so the company self-improves one reviewed change at a time.
• Run thousands of sandboxes in parallel on the same config, each fully isolated, each feeding work back through change requests.

You can grep your entire company.

Kortix is the leading open-source alternative to Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work. Your team uses it in the web app, in Slack and Microsoft Teams, or from the CLI. Agents run on real cloud computers and return finished work: decks, reports, code and replies. Any model provider with your own keys, or the ChatGPT plan you already pay for. Self-host for free, or use Kortix Cloud.

curl -fsSL https://kortix.com/install | bash
kortix self-host start      # your own box: one Docker Compose stack

Add the Kortix app to Slack, invite the bot to a channel, and mention it with a task. The message starts a session: the agent works on its own cloud computer with your connected tools and replies in the same thread. Microsoft Teams works the same way. Follow-ups stay in the same session.

Each session gets its own isolated sandbox and its own branch. The agent reproduces the bug, writes the fix, runs the tests and opens a change request. Every change request gets a preview you can open. Merge is default-deny for agents: you review the diff. Your local agent can start cloud sessions and go wide.

kortix sessions new --prompt "Reproduce issue #142, fix it, and open a change request"
kortix cr ls      # review what the agents propose

A trigger starts a session on a cron schedule or a signed webhook, with nobody present. The agent reaches 3,000+ apps through one scoped token, plus MCP, OpenAPI, GraphQL and raw HTTP. Connector credentials are brokered server-side and never enter the machine.

# kortix.yaml
triggers:
  - slug: daily-digest
    type: cron
    cron: '0 0 9 * * 1-5'
    prompt: Summarize yesterday's support tickets and open a change request with the digest.

Give an agent a job, such as ticket triage, reply drafts or CRM updates. Set each tool to Allow, Ask or Block, down to the arguments of each call. An Ask holds the call until a person approves it, then the agent resumes. Approval gates are off until you set them.

# kortix.yaml
agents:
  support-triage:
    file: agents/support-triage.md   # what it does, in plain markdown
    connectors: all                  # what it may reach

One isolated sandbox per session. Per-resource permissions for people and agents. Roles, groups, and an audit trail. SAML 2.0 single sign-on and SCIM 2.0. Secrets are encrypted at rest with a key per project. Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network. SOC 2 Type I is held; SOC 2 Type II is in progress.

One repo is the company: agents, skills, memory, connectors and triggers are files, versioned and reviewed like code. Thousands of agents run in parallel on one config, each on its own cloud computer. An agent can edit its own configuration on its session branch and propose the change. A person approves it. What an AI Operating System is, part by part →

Work runs three ways: on-demand (ask in chat, get it now), human-assisted (the agent works and checks in for the calls that matter), and automated (runs on a schedule or trigger, end to end).

• Open & yours. Open source and self-hostable — your data, your models, your infrastructure. No lock-in, fully auditable.
• A workforce, not one assistant. Org-scale specialist agents that run in parallel and compound a shared memory.
• Real work, not chat. Agents run on real cloud computers and return finished deliverables — and take real actions in your tools.
• Everything is code. Versioned, reviewable, portable, governable — never a black box.
• Bring your own models. Any provider, your own keys — or the ChatGPT subscription you already pay for.

Kortix runs on your own infrastructure — a laptop, a VPS, your own VPC, or your own on-prem network. Start a production-style local instance from Docker images, then switch the CLI between Cloud and your own hosts:

kortix self-host start
kortix hosts use selfhost  # ↔  kortix hosts use cloud

The first interactive setup asks only for the integration credentials that unlock managed git, GitHub access, and Pipedream connectors — ports, local URLs, keys and Docker Compose defaults are generated for you. Note that self-host start pulls its images from Docker Hub, so this is a self-hosted install rather than a disconnected one.

Managed hosting is Kortix Cloud.

Built to survive a security review, not slip past one: one isolated machine per session · members, groups & roles that match your org · per-resource permissions for people and agents · connector credentials brokered server-side, so the raw key never reaches the sandbox · a secrets manager, encrypted at rest and injected at runtime · a full audit trail · merge that is deny-by-default for an agent · approval gates you switch on for the actions that matter · your own VPC or on-prem network.

Isolation is per provider: the Platinum provider runs microVMs, the default runs containers. Ask us and we'll tell you which one you're on.

pnpm install
pnpm dev            # web + API (scripts/dev-local.sh)
pnpm dev:web        # web app only
pnpm dev:api        # API only
pnpm dev:sandbox    # build the local sandbox image
pnpm build          # build all packages
pnpm nuke           # tear down the local Docker environment

Apps live under apps/ (web, api, cli, desktop-electron, mobile, sandbox); documentation source is in apps/web/content/docs. The whole platform ships under one version (root VERSION) — API, frontend, CLI and desktop release together as vX.Y.Z.

Local secrets, test lanes, and the PR gate: CONTRIBUTING.md. Issues and pull requests are welcome.