Workbench gives you a place to work with an AI co-worker that gets things done through tools. Create a workbench and it comes with its own persistent worker. You message it; it does the work.
Every workbench mints one worker, deployed through the stock deploy route. There is no user-level agent following you from bench to bench, and no template to pick: one starting point.
The worker opens as a new co-worker. Its first message greets you by name, lists what it can do, and invites you to name it, or it picks a name of its own. It then asks setup questions and offers capabilities from what exists (a skill, a workflow, a connected service) and installs them in the conversation once you approve.
packages/worker is the default harness: the one definition package a
bench's worker, and any agent Workbench creates, deploys on. It carries a
small fixed tool set (mail, a working tree, artifacts, memory) and calls no
hub routes itself. A named agent appears only when an installed
package names it.
Capabilities come from @corbits/* tool and skill packages: connecting a
mail account, searching the web, running a scheduled digest. Anyone can
author a new one; the worker reuses an existing capability before
duplicating it. Write tools start ask-gated, and every approval is yours:
allow once, always allow (this workbench, this tool), ask every time, or
deny.
- The worker is static. It carries the harness's fixed set. Complex work goes to agents it creates rather than a growing tool list.
- Created agents are granular. An agent carries exactly the MCP servers its job needs, so every remote tool is its own approval decision.
The workspace has one MCP catalog: connect a server in Tools (Exa is there
from day one, keyless) and its tools become callable like any native
@corbits/* tool, with no separate integration per server. Credentials are
connected once at the workspace and walk down to benches; grants never
inherit.
Talking to your worker, or to a teammate, is an ordinary mail thread. What you send lands in an inbox; what the worker does happens through approvals you can see. Scheduled runs post a compact brief in the thread with the full artifact attached.