A multiplayer agent harness for teams. In Slack and on the web.
Run it in your own cloud, with your own models and keys.
Deploy · How it works · Security model · Customize · Contribute · Documentation
Most agents are designed like personal assistants. You can make one work for a whole team, but it quickly gets complex. QM is designed for teams. Everyone gets their own isolated workspace, and can also collaborate with the agent in channels, group messages, and projects.
Each person and each room has its own scoped memory, files, keychain view, permissions, crons, web apps, and durable sandbox.
Agents are always on. Each one has its own computer and memory, and keeps working on schedules and webhooks while you're away. Hosted always-on agents like ChatGPT Dots and Grok Bot run in the vendor's cloud on the vendor's models. QM runs in yours.
It's built with open source in mind. Pick your own model and switch between models; Pi runs models from many providers, so a deployment isn't tied to any single vendor.
Tell your coding agent of choice Let's deploy https://github.com/yc-software/qm. From here, it should follow the deployment guide in this repo.
An easy way to run QM yourself is with DigitalOcean, E2B, or Render.
If you'd rather a fully hosted option, you can try Agent 37.
If you're an infra provider interested in offering a hosted version of QM, feel free to reach out.
If you're at a bigger company and are interested in a hosted version of QM, let us know here.
- Personal and shared scopes. People customize the agent to be theirs, and still work with it collaboratively in Slack channels and projects.
- Slack and web. The same identity and configuration carries between Slack and the web app.
- Admin control. Set org-level configuration, security and sharing postures. Choose which models are available.
- Web apps. Spin up custom internal apps and publish them to the right people.
- Shared skills. Skills are scope-owned and shareable by grant, with admin-gated promotion to the whole org and skill packs imported from git repositories.
- Background work. Crons, watches, and inbound webhooks work while you're away.
- Search internal notes, email, documents, databases, and the web together
- Build internal apps, publish them to the right people, and keep their data current
- Learn your writing voice from past sends, then triage your inbox on a schedule — labels and reply drafts included
- Work in an existing repository: run tests, open PRs, monitor CI, check system logs
- Track a project in a shared channel and post updates and follow-ups
flowchart LR
DB[("Postgres<br/>sessions · memory · queue")]
subgraph CORE["Headless core"]
API["API · identity · policy · scheduler"]
LOOP["Agent loop<br/>(Pi)"]
API <--> LOOP
end
SBX["Per-scope sandbox<br/>files · tools · logged-in services"]
DB <--> API
LOOP <--> SBX
Core requires Postgres: set DATABASE_URL. Tests need one too: DATABASE_URL=<disposable Postgres> npm test creates a
throwaway database per test file and per test app. To exercise a branch against a real model and real Postgres, run
npm run dev-instance:web for the web UI and settings or npm run dev-instance:slack for Slack.
Use npm run dev-instance:both when testing both surfaces together. Bare
npm run dev-instance defaults to web for new instances and preserves the surface
on reload. Switch an existing instance with an explicit surface command.
Every turn runs through a central core, which can use a variety of models
to generate the response. A Postgres persistence layer holds user data, session history,
and other durable state. The agent has a small, fixed tool surface; one of those tools is
execute, which runs commands in the scope's own isolated sandbox — its durable computer,
where installed tools stay installed. Core also serves the public front door: sign-in, the optional built-in
auth broker, and the web UI, whose browser bundle ships as a static release that qm ui publish can update
without restarting core. These modules communicate with core over its HTTP API.
See the core-hosted front door for configuration and migration;
Slack is an optional in-process plugin that core starts
and supervises through a direct service client.
The core runs TypeScript directly on Node and uses Fastify for HTTP. The Slack plugin uses Bolt; the web UI builds with Vite and renders with Lit.
The core itself is generic. Everything specific to one team — org config, custom tools
and skills, sandbox image, infrastructure — lives in a deployment directory that the
qm CLI validates and deploys. Every substrate (session store,
sandbox, memory) sits behind an interface. Memory can also be routed by scope to
external providers while retaining the built-in notebook.
QM's approach follows local coding agents like OpenCode, Codex, and Claude Code: the agent acts as the person it's working for, with their credentials and permissions, and everything it does is audited. An org picks one security posture, which narrower scopes can only tighten:
- Strict — every agent tool call pauses for human approval, except the two no-effect turn enders.
- Auto (default) — blocks private-network access.
- Dangerous — no tool approval gates, and content screening only observes.
Content screening is a deployment setting, securityScreen.mode: off (default),
observe, or enforce, with securityScreen.classifier choosing the built-in
model or an external proxy. When on, it classifies external content under every
posture. observe only records verdicts in the audit log. enforce quarantines
flagged content pending release approval, except under Dangerous, which caps
screening at observe.
Command policy ships with no rules. An administrator can add approval rules and hard
denials, for example for recursive deletes or destructive SQL, in the admin Command policy
card or with PUT /v1/admin/scopes/<scopeId>/command-policy. Configured rules apply in
every posture, Dangerous included.
Sharing posture is independent:
- Isolated (default) — resources stay in their scope unless explicitly shared.
- Open — on a live authenticated internal human turn, the speaker's opted-in personal files, artifacts, skills, and memory may be read in an opted-in shared room.
SECURITY.md has the threat model, the operator assumptions, and the
known limitations.
Create an organization-owned deployment repository that depends on @yc-software/qm:
npm exec --yes --package=@yc-software/qm@latest -- \
qm init . --org <slug> --target <fly-or-aws>
npm installInitialization materializes a deployment skill for an agent and walks through
infrastructure, web sign-in, connector credentials, optional Slack access, deployment,
and live verification — no source checkout required. Each deployment runs in the
operator's own cloud account; initialization does not generate or enable deployment CI,
and this repository has no production deployment workflow. See
deployment.md for the details.
We take contributions as human-written text, not code — see
CONTRIBUTING.md. Describe the change you'd like informally in a
.txt or .md file in adrs/, and if we're aligned we'll handle the
implementation. Report vulnerabilities privately — see SECURITY.md,
not a public issue.
Choose how you want to customize QM:
- Config, tools, skills, and services: use the deployment repository above. It
pins
@yc-software/qmand uses that release's runtime images; no source copy is needed. - Changes to QM itself: keep your own source fork, public or private. You may modify any part of core, including the runtime, plugins, CLI, docs, and CI. Contributing those changes upstream is optional.
For a private source fork, create a standalone private repository, outside GitHub's
fork network. Seed only main and explicitly set it as the default branch:
gh repo create <org>/qm-private --private
git clone --single-branch --branch main --no-tags git@github.com:yc-software/qm qm-private
git -C qm-private remote rename origin upstream
git -C qm-private remote add origin git@github.com:<org>/qm-private
git -C qm-private push -u origin main
gh repo edit <org>/qm-private --default-branch mainDo not seed with git push --mirror: it copies unrelated upstream branches and tags,
leaves default-branch selection implicit, and can delete destination-only refs on later
pushes. The upstream remote supplies source updates without copying those refs to your
repository. For a public source fork, GitHub's Fork button is also an option. A GitHub
fork of a public repository cannot be private; keep private work outside that network.
Review inherited workflows before enabling Actions or adding credentials. Choose the CI checks you want, and disable or adapt upstream release and publishing workflows for your own package and image registries. Copying the source does not configure production deployment CI.
Keep deployment configuration, tools, skills, plugin images, and infrastructure in
deploy/layers/<org>/ in a private source fork, or in a separate private deployment
repository when your source is public. Never commit secrets. See
deploy/layers/README.md for initialization and layout.
Keep deployment data separate from core code, but change core wherever your desired
behavior requires it.
From the source checkout, install dependencies with npm ci and use the in-tree CLI.
After completing the provider setup in deployment.md, build and
deploy your modified services explicitly:
node cli/bin/qm.ts check --config <deployment-dir>/qm.config.jsonc
node cli/bin/qm.ts plan --config <deployment-dir>/qm.config.jsonc --build-from .
node cli/bin/qm.ts up --config <deployment-dir>/qm.config.jsonc --build-from .
node cli/bin/qm.ts check --config <deployment-dir>/qm.config.jsonc --liveUse this checkout's CLI when changing the CLI itself. Without --build-from, the
normal deployment path selects published images, so editing source alone does not
change the deployed runtime. If you publish custom images instead, configure their
immutable references through imageOverrides. Follow the provider guide for sandbox
image builds; service builds do not replace that step.
For a source fork, update-qm merges upstream changes while preserving intentional
local behavior. Land sync PRs with their merge ancestry intact, never squash or rebase
them. Conflicts are expected maintenance work, not a requirement to discard
customizations. Use upstream-pr only when you want to contribute a generic change;
it prepares a clean upstream branch without private deployment data or history.
For a package deployment, upgrade the exact @yc-software/qm dependency and lockfile,
review contract changes and generated assets, then validate and deploy. There is no
upstream source history to merge.
- labs.ycombinator.com/qm — the documentation site
docs/getting-started.md— first run, end to endcli/README.md— theqmCLI and the deployment directory contractdocs/deploy-directory.md— the deployment directory in fulldocs/principal-links.md— one person, several sign-ins: linking principalsdocs/porter.md— running qm on Porterdocs/superserve.md— using Superserve for agent sandboxes.env.example— every knob, documented in placedocs/swarms.md— durable agent pools, scoped messages, and blank Modal workersdocs/model-gateway.md— discover and route models through a gatewayplugins/— the surfaces core hosts (web UI, portal, auth broker)
Except where otherwise noted, QM is available under the MIT License.