What changed
A Channel with Autonomous on doesn't wait to be asked. About every half hour Nebula checks in, reads what the Channel is for and what the team has said, and if something has stalled it hands the work to the Channel's agents and says so in the Channel. If nothing needs doing, it stays quiet.
It also keeps track of promises. When someone says they'll do something by a time ("in 15 minutes", "by 3", "tomorrow"), Nebula notes when it's due and moves its next check-in up to that time. At that check-in it follows up first: did it happen, and if not, it asks the person or starts the work with the Channel's agents.
New Channels start with Autonomous on in the desktop and mobile apps. You can turn it off when you create a Channel, or later under Channel settings, General. Anyone who can see the Channel can change it.
How it works
- A Channel has a purpose ("Ship Northwind v2 on Friday: the new pricing page, the launch email and a competitor comparison table") and agents on its roster: Scout for research, Quill for writing.
- The team posts the inputs: final pricing, a finished page design, a customer list. Amara says she'll post the competitor pricing table in 15 minutes, then goes into customer calls.
- Nobody writes for a while and the table never arrives. At its next check-in Nebula posts: the table Amara promised hasn't landed, so Scout is building one, and Quill is drafting the launch email nobody had started. It asks Amara to post hers if it's done, so the two can be merged.
- Both Tasks run at the same time and answer in threads under Nebula's message. A few minutes later Scout's reply has the comparison table, with a link to each vendor's pricing page, and Quill's has the email draft as a file.
Limits that keep it calm
- Nebula waits while people are talking: a check-in is skipped if someone wrote in the last 10 minutes.
- It uses the agents already in the Channel. It only adds or creates an agent when the roster is empty.
- A check-in starts at most 4 Tasks, and a Channel's check-ins start at most 12 a day.
- After 3 check-ins in a row with nothing new, it waits until someone writes or one of their Tasks has new output. Check-ins where Nebula says nothing don't count.
- Check-ins run as the Channel's owner and use their credits. With no credits left, the check-in is skipped.
- Autonomous isn't offered in DMs or in Channels shared with another company.
Why it matters
Work stalls in the gaps: a promise that slips, a task everyone assumes someone else picked up. An Autonomous Channel closes those gaps by itself, and every step it takes is posted in the Channel, so the team can see what was started and why.
