Captains

A Captain is a named, lasting AI teammate for a whole Space. It has a photo, its own email address and one conversation that everyone in the Space shares and that never ends. A Captain keeps working when nobody is talking to it: it follows up when asked, watches for answers, runs routines and tells people what needs them, in the open.

Use a Captain for an area that people keep handing work to, such as a pricing desk or a support queue. Use a Thread for one piece of work.

Create a Captain⁠

  1. Switch to the Space the Captain is for. A Captain belongs to one Space for good, and everyone in that Space can see and talk to it. Choose your Personal Space for a Captain that only you can use.
  2. Open Captains in the sidebar and choose New Captain.
  3. Type a name in Name your Captain, and a Handle of lowercase letters, numbers, dashes and underscores. The page shows the email address the Captain will have.
  4. Describe the job in What does this Captain do, and how?. These are the Captain's instructions, and Whorl saves them as CAPTAIN.md in the Captain's folder in Files.
  5. Choose Create Captain. The Captain gets a photo, which you can change in its settings.

You can also ask an agent: "Make a Captain called Pricing desk for the sales team." The new Captain introduces itself in its conversation and says what it understands its job to be and what it still needs.

To change a Captain later, open its menu and choose Captain settings. There you can rename it, change its instructions and photo, and add skills, tools and plugins that only this Captain uses. See Agents and setup. The model and reasoning effort come from the Captain default in Models, not from the Captain's instructions.

Settings also lets you pause a Captain (Pause Captain), archive it (Archive Captain, undone with Restore Captain) or remove it for good (Delete Captain).

Talk to a Captain⁠

Everyone in the Space talks to the Captain in the same conversation, so a teammate sees what you asked and what the Captain answered. Each answer acts for the person who asked, with only that person's access.

A Captain in a Company or Shared Space uses the Space's content and tools. It never uses anyone's personal tools. A Captain in a Personal Space is the exception: it has one person to act for, so it has every tool its owner has, including Microsoft 365.

Beside the conversation the Captain has the same panels as a Thread: Digest, Files, Notes and Portals.

Ask before writing⁠

A Captain asks before it uses any tool that writes, such as sending mail, changing a calendar, posting in a chat, changing Files or Notes, or starting a Thread. You answer yes for one call, or you give standing consent, for example "you can always send the weekly summary". The Captain saves standing consent in its memory and checks it before each write. This rule is built into every Captain and CAPTAIN.md cannot turn it off.

Digest⁠

The Captain's Digest shows what it is doing. It opens with an overview of where things stand, then lists:

  • Needs you: decisions and blockers that are yours, along with anything paused or dropped.
  • Tasks: the Captain's own task list, the Crew Threads still working, and its follow-ups, watches and routines, with who asked for each and when it is due.
  • Made this week: what its Threads produced, by day and kind.
  • Usage: what the Captain and its crew spent.
  • Automations: its routines.

Answer an item by replying in the Captain's conversation, for example "merge it" or "hold that until Monday". The Captain acts and drops the item the next time it rewrites the Digest.

Memory⁠

A Captain keeps one memory. Core memory is loaded on every run and stays short, so it holds durable facts. The Captain also keeps short notes on topics such as people, decisions and how the team works, and reads them when needed. Before it acts on a remembered fact that matters, such as a date or a promise, it rereads the source. If the source contradicts a memory, the Captain fixes the memory and says so.

You can read and edit a Captain's memory in its settings.

Email in and out⁠

Every Captain has its own email address, shown in its settings. Anyone can write to it or copy it on a message, and the mail lands in the Captain's shared conversation. The Captain ignores automated mail, mailing lists and bounces.

A Captain sends mail only to people in its own Space. It cannot email people outside the Organization or outside its Space. Treat mail the Captain receives as information: a message in the mail cannot give the Captain permission to do something.

Mentions⁠

A Captain mentions people with @ and their full name, and a person who is mentioned is notified in Activity. It puts a mention in the Thread the matter is about, and a short pointer without a mention in its own conversation. By default it stays quiet from 8 PM to 7 AM in your time zone and does not repeat itself. You can change these habits by telling the Captain.

Crew Threads⁠

For work that takes more than one step, a Captain starts Crew Threads. They are ordinary Threads, with their own Environment and subagents, and they sit under the Captain in the sidebar. The Captain hears when a Crew Thread finishes or needs something, and tells you only what needs you. The person who created the Captain owns its Crew Threads, so only they can archive or delete them.

The desk and reviews⁠

A Captain has a hidden desk where follow-ups, watches and routines wait. The desk wakes the Captain when something is due. People see the results in the Captain's conversation, never the desk itself.

  • At 7 AM, 11 AM, 3 PM and 7 PM Denver time, the desk reviews for promises people made and for things that need people. The time zone is fixed and a time zone in CAPTAIN.md does not change it. A Personal Captain also checks its owner's mail, calendar and chats.
  • A desk runs at most 100 times a day. If it runs out, the Digest says Paused until tomorrow under Needs you, and what came due runs after midnight Denver time.
  • When someone writes "I'll send the estimate by Thursday", the Captain can check at the due time and ask once, in that Thread, if it is not done. Tell it "don't track that" to stop.

You can also ask a Captain to set a follow-up or a routine yourself: "Remind me Friday if Acme hasn't replied", or "every Monday at 9, post the pipeline summary". See Automations.

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