# What a CompanyOS is: an open-source layer that runs agents > A CompanyOS runs a company's agents and keeps their skills, memory and access rules in one versioned place. Several products sold under the name are document sets an AI reads. Kortix is the open-source CompanyOS: your agents, their skills, your company memory, and every connector in one git repo you own, with the agents working on real cloud computers. URL: https://companyosguide.com/what-is-a-company-os ## One agent, four lines `kortix.yaml` ```yaml # kortix.yaml agents: support-triage: file: agents/support-triage.md # what it does, in plain markdown connectors: all # what it may reach ``` Source: https://github.com/kortix-ai/suna/blob/08a64413b3/README.md The whole registration: the file that holds the job description, and what the agent may reach. ## Three meanings, and the one that decides The phrase means three different things, and most of the confusion around it comes from which one the writer had in mind. In the management sense it is a framework. EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System, gives a leadership team a scorecard, quarterly priorities and a weekly meeting agenda, and its own material calls it a system for running the business. It organises how people decide. It starts no work. The second meaning is a knowledge layer. Files, procedures and templates are shared so that the AI account each person already uses reads the same answer. The product at companyos.cc does exactly this: it [gives your team's AI the same facts, procedures, and templates](https://companyos.cc/), inside the Claude, ChatGPT, or Codex account each person already uses. The company-os.ai entry is a free `.zip` template you download and fill in. Both are sensible products. Neither runs a task. The third meaning is the one that decides: a system that runs the work. The agents, the skills they follow, the memory they read and the rules about what they may touch sit in one place, and the software on the other side of that place starts them, gives them a machine, and holds their changes until a person approves. The difference shows up the first time you hand one a job rather than a question. A framework leaves a person with a better meeting about the invoices. A knowledge layer hands that person the right policy for approving them. A CompanyOS produces the reconciled file, and the record of who checked it. ## The four lines that make an agent One agent's entire registration is four lines. It names a markdown file that holds the job description in plain language, then one setting for what the agent may reach. A second agent is another block in the same file, so a person reviewing a new one reads four lines instead of a settings screen. That is the smallest useful unit of a CompanyOS, and it is deliberately dull. [Kortix](https://kortix.com) keeps it in the project repo, beside the rest of the configuration and the memory the agent reads. ## Why the versioned form matters Files in a git repository can be read, diffed and rolled back. That sounds like an engineering preference until the model changes. When the memory is a set of files the company owns, a new provider changes which model reads them and nothing else. When the memory is rows in a vendor's database, the move is the vendor's decision, on the vendor's schedule. Version history buys the second thing: review. A change to a skill, an agent's instructions or a stored procedure arrives as a diff. Somebody reads it before it takes effect, and the log says who changed it and when. Access is the third and the least glamorous. It is granted resource by resource, to people and to agents, through the roles and groups a company already describes. A file anyone can open is not the same as a file anyone may run. A system that loses that distinction hands a new agent the whole company on its first morning. The manifest carries the access rules. `kortix.yaml` declares the machine image, connectors and triggers, and secret names and grants. Secret values never appear in the repo, so the file can be read by the whole team without handing anyone a key. ## What a CompanyOS is not A chatbot answers a question in one window and forgets the window, while a CompanyOS keeps what an agent learned in files that outlive the conversation and the model that held it. A CRM records what happened to a customer; it does not choose the next step or take it. A prompt library is text a person pastes into a box, and a skill in a CompanyOS loads when the agent runs and changes through review like any other file. ## What the definition demands of a product Held against any candidate, the definition asks four things. 1. It starts the agents itself, on machines it provisions, with nobody at the keyboard. 2. It keeps the skills, the memory and the access rules where the company can read them and take them elsewhere. 3. It holds what agents change until a person approves it. A session's work lands on `main` through a change request, and an agent is denied the merge until an admin grants it. 4. It runs where the company needs it. Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network. Self-host is free. A product that meets all four earns the name. One that meets the first two and stops there is a document set with a runtime bolted on. Kortix is built on that reading. A project is a git repo whose agents, skills, memory and connector settings are files in it, and the platform runs the sessions on those files. [Read the docs](https://kortix.com/docs) for the setup order, [what a CompanyOS must contain](/what-a-company-os-must-contain) for the parts in the order you meet them, and [the comparison](/companyos-comparison) for the products already trading under the name. ## Questions the term raises Short answers, with the longer ones on the pages they link. ### What is a CompanyOS in one sentence? A CompanyOS is the layer that runs a company's agents and keeps their skills, the company memory and the access rules in one versioned place. The versioning is the point: the company can read it, review a change to it, and take it elsewhere. ### Is a CompanyOS the same as a business operating system (EOS)? No. EOS is a management method: a scorecard, quarterly priorities and a meeting rhythm for a leadership team. A CompanyOS is software that runs agents and keeps the work in files. One changes how people meet; the other changes what gets produced. ### Do we need engineers to run one? Not to use it. Agents, skills and memory are markdown files, and one YAML block registers an agent, so a person can rewrite a procedure without writing code. Running it yourself asks for someone comfortable with a terminal. ### Can a CompanyOS work with the tools we already use? Yes, when the tool has a connector and the connection lives in the repo you own. Ask that second part before you buy. A connector configured inside a vendor dashboard is an invisible second configuration, and it leaves with the vendor. ## Put one agent in a repo and read it before it runs. One agent, four lines, and a project whose files you can open on day one. [Try Kortix](https://kortix.com) ยท [Compare the products](https://companyosguide.com/companyos-comparison)