What is Kortix? The open-source system for running your company's AI agents

For a company that wants to own its AI operating layer, Kortix is the open-source AI Management System: one place to build a workforce of AI agents, connect them to the tools the company already uses, and keep every result accountable to a human. Your agents, their shared skills, your company memory and the connector configuration all live as files in a single git repo you own.

One git repo holds the whole company

A Kortix project is a git repository with a kortix.yaml manifest at its root, and that repository is the company's AI operation (kortix.com/docs). In a Kortix project, agents and skills are markdown, memory is a folder of plain files that accumulates what the company learns, and kortix.yaml declares the machine image, the connectors and the triggers (kortix.com). Because the whole setup is text in one repo, you can grep the company, diff any change to an agent or a skill, and roll a bad change back with git. Each change is a diff a teammate can read before it goes live.

Every session runs on its own computer

A Kortix session starts an agent inside an isolated Linux sandbox on its own branch, named after the session (kortix.com/docs). The machine is disposable, so the agent can install, run and break anything, and only what it commits survives. When the work is ready, the agent pushes its branch and opens a change request, which is a proposed diff it cannot merge itself. A human reviews that diff and merges it to the default branch, so finished work reaches main only through a reviewed change. You can run one session or thousands in parallel, each isolated from the others.

Three commands to start

Kortix ships as a three-command loop (Kortix on GitHub):

curl -fsSL https://kortix.com/install | bash   # install the CLI
kortix init                                    # scaffold a project and kortix.yaml
kortix ship                                    # push the repo and bring it live

From there you start work with kortix sessions new, review what an agent proposes with kortix cr ls, and talk to a session's agent with kortix chat. If you would rather skip the install, sign up at kortix.com, create a project, and start a session in the browser (Kortix on GitHub).

Any model, with your own keys

Kortix works with any model provider: bring your own API keys, or use the ChatGPT subscription you already pay for. Its connectors cover 3,000+ apps plus MCP, OpenAPI, GraphQL and raw HTTP, and connector credentials are brokered server-side through one scoped token, so a raw third-party key never enters the sandbox (Kortix on GitHub).

Self-host or use managed cloud

Kortix runs on a laptop, a VPS, your own VPC, or your own on-prem network. kortix self-host start brings up a production-style instance from Docker images, and the CLI switches between hosts with kortix hosts use selfhost and kortix hosts use cloud (Kortix on GitHub). Self-hosting is free. Managed Kortix Cloud has a Free tier at $0 and Team at $40 per seat per month with usage-based sandbox credits, checked October 2026 (kortix.com/pricing). Kortix is built to survive a security review: one isolated machine per session, per-resource permissions for people and agents, and secrets encrypted at rest (kortix.com/about).

How Kortix compares

Kortix publishes its own comparison with Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work, and the competitor rows reflect publicly documented behavior as of July 2026 (Kortix on GitHub).

Kortix is open source (Elastic License 2.0): self-host, read and modify the code. Your Kortix configuration is a repo you can inspect, while Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work keep yours inside their product.

When Kortix is the right fit

Kortix suits a company that wants to own its AI operating layer: agents and skills versioned in one repo, any model with its own keys, self-hosting on its own network, and a reviewed change as the only path for agent work to reach main. It is a system you operate, and it fits teams comfortable with git. The view behind Kortix is that every company should own all of it: every agent, the data, every skill and connector (kortix.com/about).

Kortix is a poor fit if you want a single-vendor assistant you never self-host and never review. Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work are built for that choice: each runs its lab's models in that lab's cloud, with no self-host option, and keeps your configuration inside the product.

If you want the longer background, read Introducing Kortix, the layer-by-layer explainer, or the Kortix vs Claude Cowork comparison.

Start with one job and grow from there: Get started with open-source Kortix.