# o8

> o8 is a macOS control room for autonomous engineering: one orchestrator dispatches a fleet of coding agents, a governance layer reviews every diff, and nothing risky merges without the operator's sign-off. Free with your own keys; an optional Founding Operator edition runs managed inference.

Documentation for o8, organized for agents. Each link is the raw markdown twin of a docs page — append `.md` to any `/docs` URL for the same content. The full corpus is at /llms-full.txt.

## Start here

- [What is o8?](https://o8.run/docs/what-is-o8.md): o8 is a control room for autonomous engineering — one orchestrator dispatches a fleet of coding agents, a governance layer reviews every diff, and nothing risky merges without your sign-off.
- [Getting started](https://o8.run/docs/getting-started.md): Install o8, sign in, bring your keys, and run your first dispatch.
- [Concepts](https://o8.run/docs/concepts.md): The eight primitives o8 is built on — runtime, agent, session, packet, lane, mission, review, approval — and how they fit together.

## Control Room

- [Control Room](https://o8.run/docs/control-room.md): The IDE-shaped pane you run the fleet from — the orchestrator chat, the panels, sessions, and the o8.md workspace spec.

## Agents & Dispatch

- [Dispatching work](https://o8.run/docs/dispatching-work.md): How a task becomes a merged change — missions, isolated worktrees, the runtimes, and where you sign off.
- [Review & approval](https://o8.run/docs/review-and-approval.md): How o8 decides what's safe to merge — risk-classified blind review and a five-layer recovery ladder with a hard cost ceiling.

## The Brain

- [The Brain](https://o8.run/docs/the-brain.md): o8's queryable memory — a cited map of how your project actually works, built from your specs, PRs, and every agent session.

## Canvas

- [Canvas](https://o8.run/docs/canvas.md): o8's spatial glass-space — work and media as draggable cards on one plane, with a navigator globe. Experimental.

## Symon

- [Symon](https://o8.run/docs/symon.md): o8's voice operator — talk to o8 and it talks back, takes action by voice, and still stops for your yes on anything irreversible.
- [Dictation & say-commands](https://o8.run/docs/dictation.md): System-wide hands-free dictation and a spoken command grammar — text and voice control in any app, not just o8.

## MCP & CLI

- [MCP](https://o8.run/docs/mcp.md): o8 ships an MCP server first, an IDE second — any agent that speaks MCP can drive an o8 fleet through the same governance layer.
- [The CLI](https://o8.run/docs/cli.md): The local o8 command line — an agent-first, JSON-by-default wrapper over o8's API, on $PATH in every worktree.

## Reference

- [System & troubleshooting](https://o8.run/docs/system.md): Requirements, install and updates, the macOS permissions o8 asks for, and fixes for the common gotchas.
- [Plans](https://o8.run/docs/plans.md): The honest deal — the whole app is free with your own keys, with an optional Founding Operator edition that runs a managed layer for you.

## Compare & decide

- [What is o8?](https://o8.run/what-is-o8): o8 is a local-first macOS app that runs a team of AI coding agents under one orchestrator, with a governance layer that reviews every change before it merges.
- [Pricing](https://o8.run/pricing): Free forever with your own model keys; an optional one-time Founding Operator edition adds managed inference.
- [o8 vs Cursor](https://o8.run/vs/cursor): Cursor is an AI code editor; o8 is the orchestration + governance layer above the repo that runs a fleet of agents.
- [o8 vs Devin](https://o8.run/vs/devin): Devin is a hosted autonomous engineer; o8 is local-first and runs a fleet of agents on your machine under a review gate.
- [o8 vs Claude Code](https://o8.run/vs/claude-code): o8 runs Claude Code — alongside Codex, Gemini, and opencode — as agents in a governed fleet.
- [o8 vs Aider](https://o8.run/vs/aider): Aider is a single-agent pair-programmer CLI; o8 orchestrates many agents with a merge gate, audit, and memory.