Always-on AI coworkers for text, calls and Slack
Each Dot has its own role, its own permissions and its own computer, and its work lands as pages you can keep editing. Clone the template, self-host it, and make it your own.
Scout
Researcher · computer running
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acme.dev/blog/agents-sdk
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Acme Agents SDK — notes
Acme shipped a hosted agent runtime with tool calling and traces. No UI layer, no human-in-the-loop primitives, and agents run on Acme's servers only.
Where the work ends up
A Space is a home for working documents. Browse pages in a searchable library, nest them as subpages, and open any one in a focused editor. Write it yourself, save a conversation as a page, or ask a Dot to draft and revise it.
- A real editor
- Formatting, slash commands, undo and redo, with a Markdown source mode when you want it.
- Edits that don't collide
- Autosave reports its progress, a failed save keeps your draft, and revision checks stop a stale edit from overwriting newer content.
Coworkers with one job each
Give each Dot a name, a role, instructions and the tools it may use. A researcher investigates a topic; a writer turns the findings into a draft. Each one has its own conversation, and you decide which Spaces it can reach.
- Permissions per Dot
- Browser, files, shell and memory are granted one Dot at a time, so a writer never holds a researcher's access.
- Always on
- Schedule recurring work and it runs server-side in its original conversation, with pause and retry.
Each Dot gets its own computer
A Dot can have an isolated computer, using OpenBot's container supervisor. Its browser profile and workspace files persist across stop and start, and every action shows up inline in the chat as it happens.
- Watch, then take over
- The Computer panel shows the browser, files, terminal output and activity, and you can take control at any point.
- Credentials stay on the server
- Service keys never reach the browser, and each Dot gets a computer credential of its own.
Nothing is saved until you say so
Ask a Dot to show you a draft first. A review card pauses the conversation for Approve & save or Decline; approval creates the page in a Space you've authorized and hands you the link, and the Dot carries on after your decision.
- Retries don't duplicate
- If a save is retried, it recovers the page that was already created instead of writing a second one.
One conversation, wherever you are
Text a Dot, call it, or mention it in Slack and pick up the thread later. On a call, realtime speech keeps talking while a separate compute agent does the longer work, using the same context and the same permissions.
- A proper call screen
- Live timer, separate captions for you and the Dot, mute, speaker, and a minimized view so you can keep going in chat.
- Slack through Channels SDK
- A managed Slack connection, with an explicit allowlist of workspaces and users.
From the team behind the protocol
AG-UI is the open protocol for how an agent talks to the application a person is looking at. We wrote it and maintain the reference implementation, and OpenDots is built on it end to end.
AG-UI is adopted by
- AG-UI
- Carries streamed messages, tool calls and agent state to the interface, so computer activity and approval cards appear as the agent works.
- CopilotKit React SDK and runtime
- The chat, the tool renderers and the human-in-the-loop pause are CopilotKit components you can restyle or replace.
- Intelligence Threads
- Durable conversation history, with a separate thread for each page and each specialist.
- Channels SDK
- Brings Dots into Slack through a managed connection, following OpenTag.
- TanStack AI
- Model streaming and server-tool execution against any OpenAI-compatible provider.
- OpenBot computers
- The container supervisor and computer service behind each Dot's browser, files and shell.
What's in the template
OpenDots is an alpha template, not a hosted product. You run it and configure its services. Here is what's in it, and how far each part has been tested.
Single-owner by design today. Shared editing, invitations, file uploads and multi-Dot group conversations are listed as further work in the repository.
Running locally in five commands
Clone it, run it, and start writing pages and configuring Dots before you connect a single service. Add your conversation and model settings to .env when you want to start chatting.
Needs Node.js 24 and npm. Calls, Slack and Dot computers each have their own setup guide in the repository.
$ git clone https://github.com/CopilotKit/OpenDots.git$ cd OpenDots$ npm ci$ cp .env.example .env$ npm run dev
Questions
Build your own Dots
Clone the template and make it yours: define your Dots, connect your services, and change the interface and tools to fit how you work. If you’re building something bigger on it, our engineers can help.
