The first four chapters follow one task through the company. But a company isn't only its task queue — it has a direction, a budget, and a reason every task exists. That layer lives in the Business tab, and it is how you steer the whole organization rather than one job at a time.
The charter
The charter is the company's standing context: its north star, its objectives, the constraints it must respect, and the operating policy it works under. You write it once in the Business tab and revise it whenever the direction shifts. It isn't decoration — the charter is threaded into every agent's briefing, into the pitches the Board produces, and into what the Secretary is allowed to act on. Set it well and every agent inherits the same sense of what the company is for; leave it empty and they only know the task in front of them.
The Cockpit
Where the charter says what the company should be doing, the Cockpit shows what it is doing — the company reflected back against its own charter. It surfaces spend against budget and the signals worth your attention: drift from the stated objectives, agents sitting idle, work that has been blocked too long. It is the one screen that answers "is the company on course?" without your having to read every task.
The Company Scorecard
On the Business tab's Goals view sits the Company Scorecard — live performance against the charter in one card. Where the Cockpit surfaces signals to act on, the Scorecard is the one-glance answer to "how is the company actually doing?": what's been delivered, spend against budget, the median lead time from task to merge, and progress on the objectives you set. It is the company's vital signs, read off the same work the rest of the panel tracks.
The Secretary
The Secretary is your conversational chief-of-staff. You chat with it the way you'd brief a human one — ask it where things stand, or dictate a change to the charter. What it never does is act on its own: every directive it derives from your instruction is gated, landing in a queue for your explicit confirmation before anything happens. It reads the whole company's state to advise you, but it spends nothing, builds nothing, and approves nothing until you say the word. It is leverage with a safety catch — your intent, executed, but only after you confirm it.
Web research and the strategy engine
Two capabilities run above the day-to-day. Both are off by default and master-switched from Settings → Feature Flags in the panel — the switch persists and takes effect on the next backend restart. The environment variables below are the same toggles at the source, and still carry the parts the panel deliberately doesn't surface (the research provider and its API key, which never leave the server). Their effect shows up inside agent runs once enabled.
Web research
Flip Web research on in Settings → Feature Flags (or set ROBOCO_RESEARCH_ENABLED=true), choose a provider with ROBOCO_RESEARCH_PROVIDER (tavily, brave, or exa), and supply ROBOCO_RESEARCH_API_KEY. With that in place, the Board and PM agents gain web_search and web_fetch through the roboco-search MCP server — so a Product Owner scoping a feature can ground it in the live web, not just your codebase. The API key stays server-side; the agents never see it and never make the external call themselves. Leave it off and the tools simply aren't there — a no-op.
The strategy engine
Flip the strategy engine on in Settings → Feature Flags (or set ROBOCO_STRATEGY_ENGINE_ENABLED=true) and a background loop begins watching the company against its charter. When it spots drift from the objectives, agents gone idle, or work blocked for too long, it tells you. It is notify-only by design: it never spends, never builds, never approves — it raises the flag and leaves the decision where every decision belongs, with you. Off, it is fully dormant.
The self-healing CI loop
The same shape, pointed inward: flip self-healing on in Settings → Feature Flags (or set ROBOCO_SELF_HEAL_ENABLED=true) and RoboCo begins watching its own repository's CI. When a run regresses it tells you. Turn on the second switch (ROBOCO_SELF_HEAL_ORIGINATE_ENABLED=true) and it goes one step further — it opens a fix task for the regression and hands it straight to the Main PM, who coordinates the repair. It never merges or deploys that work itself: the fix still flows through the normal gates — dev, QA, PR review, and your merge — so the company can repair its own build autonomously while the decision to ship stays yours. Both switches are off by default, and it watches only the one repo you name as RoboCo itself.
Feel the whole thing
The cleanest way to understand this layer is to walk it once, end to end:
- Open the Business tab and set the charter — north star, a couple of objectives, your constraints, the operating policy.
- Open the Cockpit and watch the company reflected against it — spend against budget, and the signals as they appear.
- Chat the Secretary and dictate one change to the charter. Watch the gated directive land in the queue, and confirm it — that round trip, from your sentence to a confirmed action, is the whole shape of how you steer RoboCo from above.
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RoboCo is early-stage, work-in-progress software (v0) — expect rough edges. The Get Started guide covers setup, configuration, and the security model.