zkTerminal in five minutes
Written 2026-11-06 for someone who has never seen it. Plain words, no promises
beyond what runs today. Where something is not live yet, it says so.
What it is
zkTerminal is a place to talk to an AI and to run a small AI team for your
company, with your material kept private. You sign in with an email link or a
passkey. Behind it sits Zynapse, the gateway at api.zkagi.ai, which does the
model calls, the metering and the receipts. You never paste a model key; the
gateway knows who you are from your sign-in.
Two things happen there. You talk: an ordinary chat, private by default,
gone in 24 hours unless you ask to keep it. And you hand over missions: a
goal the system breaks into steps, runs within a budget you set, and brings back
with evidence. The team is the same idea on a timer: eight named teammates who
propose work each day and do only what you approve.
The day
- Morning. Bruno, the analyst, writes one page: market moves from named
public sources with timestamps, what matters in the company from your own
documents, and three decisions that need you. Every number is checked against
its source; if a check fails the page says so instead of hiding it. It is
information, never investment advice.
- Talk, or a mission. Ask anything in chat. Type @Tora, @Ellie, @Pico and so
on to talk to one teammate directly. For bigger work, say "launch a mission:
..." and watch it run; each step is billed to you with a receipt.
- The Door. Anything that would leave the company waits here: a post, a
message, a spend, the finish of a mission. You approve exactly the text you
see, edit it (which makes a new draft), or reject it with a note the team
remembers. Nothing is sent without your yes. Channels without credentials are
simulated, never sent.
- The office. The team at their desks, live: who is working, on which step,
on which lane, for how much so far; who is waiting at the Door; today's spend
against the daily cap. Start, pause and the cap are on this page only, never a
chat command, so an AI holding your sign-in cannot switch itself on.
What "private" means here, in plain words
- Sealed lane. By default a model call runs inside a GPU enclave (a TEE): the
machine proves what code it runs before any text is sent, and the gateway
refuses to send if the proof fails. The other lane, "fast", is a provider with
zero data retention by contract and no hardware proof. You pick per call; the
default is sealed.
- Scrub. Before text leaves the gateway, names, numbers and other sensitive
values are replaced with placeholders; the model sees the placeholders; the
real values are put back in the answer on the way to you. A company workspace
can switch scrubbing off for itself.
- Receipts. Every answer, mission step and top-up gets a signed receipt that
anyone can verify at api.zkagi.ai/r/<id>. A receipt holds amounts, counts and
hashes, never the text.
- Your key. A passkey on your device holds the key to what you keep. The
server stores only ciphertext; we cannot open it, and a lost passkey without
the recovery code means lost data. That is the trade.
- What is kept. Chats are off the record and expire after 24 hours. To keep
one, ask in chat ("keep this"); the assistant stores it in your vault with the
`keep` tool. Missions keep their finished work for you until you delete it.
Logs hold no content.
How a company sets up (the five steps, at /id/start)
1. Sign in. One email link or passkey; the first sign-in creates the account.
2. Make your key. A passkey at /id/vault, plus a recovery code.
3. Add credit. $10 once to get started, then pay as you go; the last dollar
works like the first and credit never expires. Card (Stripe's page) or the
ZKAGI token.
4. Your company workspace. One account the whole company shares: one Brain,
one team, one balance, with membership by email domain (everyone @yourcompany
lands in it). The operator sets it up once; until then you work in your
personal account.
5. Give the Brain its first document, then switch the team on. The Brain is
your company's documents, encrypted per workspace and searched locally; the
team works only from it. The team is off until you switch it on at the
office, with a daily cap (default $3) and a limit on work in flight.
How the team works for you
Each teammate has one job, a budget per task, a context rule (company material
and recent outcomes, never your chat history) and a definition of done.
- Tora, strategist: proposes up to three tasks a day. Each waits at the Door.
- Ellie, researcher: answers an approved question from your material, naming the
documents and what is still unknown.
- Pico, writer: drafts posts and warm outreach in your voice. Every draft waits
at the Door.
- Gus, critic: checks each draft on a stronger model and grades it; banned words
cap the score whatever the model says.
- Bruno, analyst: the Morning.
- Milo, growth: once a week, asks AI assistants the questions your buyers ask and
reports whether they name you, plus trend data. Needs your website and the
operator's tool keys.
- Fitz, engineer (research-lab crew): runs a small experiment as a Python script
in a sealed sandbox, no network, and reports every number as printed.
- Kai, director (video-studio crew): writes a shot-by-shot brief; the render is a
spend that waits at the Door. The video studio is not deployed; Kai's
briefs run, renders do not, until the operator switches a studio on.
Rules that are code, not prompts: autonomy is off until you switch it on; a
daily cap and a cap on work in flight stop new work; nothing external happens
without a Door approval; teammates have no browser, no send, no spend; every
unit of work is a mission with a budget and receipts; pause stops new work at
once and running work finishes within its budget. "Done" means a reviewer
passed it; otherwise the status says why not.
What it costs
Pay as you go, metered per call at the gateway's published rates, with a receipt
for each. $10 of credit gets an account started; an optional $100 plan gives 30
days and the same value as credit. The team's daily cap is yours to set between
$0.50 and $50; a mission's budget is a hard cap between $0.05 and $25 (default
$2). A Morning costs a few cents. Frontier models from closed providers are a
separate paid lane, switched on per account by the operator and never used by
default; the private lanes are open models.
Live and not live, honestly (2026-11-06)
Live: sign-in, passkey vault, credit, chat on the sealed and fast lanes, the
Brain, missions, the Morning, the Door, the office with its live stream, the team
timer. Needs a deploy from this branch: the team as @-mentionable agents in chat
(seeded once on the server), the top bar, the start page. Not deployed: the
video studio's renders. Not built: scheduled missions beyond the team's daily
rhythm, posting to channels without credentials (they are simulated).