The Founder Journey — Start, Build, Sell, Scale

Most guides for founders are just content — articles that tell you what to do and leave you to do it. This one is different: every step maps to something Ever Works can actually do for you. Read it top to bottom as one playbook, or jump to the phase you're in. The four phases — Start → Build → Sell → Scale — line up with the platform's core building blocks: Missions, Ideas, Works, and Agents.

The mental model in one line: you set the goal; an AI organization researches, builds, and runs the business toward it — 24/7, in your own Git.

1. Start — turn a goal into a plan

You don't need a finished plan to begin. You need a goal.

Define a Mission. A Mission is an ambitious, ongoing goal — "run the best cats business worldwide," "launch an AI-tools media company." It's bigger than any one website, and Ever Works keeps pursuing it for you.
Let Ideas come to you. From a Mission, the platform generates Ideas: atomic, one-shot proposals ("a directory of indie cat-toy brands," "a weekly cat-care blog"). Add your own, accept the good ones, dismiss the rest.
Plan vs. commit. Not sure yet? Capture it as an Idea and let the system research it before you commit — think of an Idea as a lightweight plan you can drop cheaply. Already know exactly what you want? Skip straight to a Work.
Think about the entity early. If this is a real business, you'll want a company behind it — and the first half of that ships today. Submitting the Company chip on /new opens the Register Company dialog: enter a Company name and, optionally, a two-letter Country (ISO 3166-1) code, then click Register. You land on /org/<slug>/dashboard with a real Organization backed by a Work of kind company. This is v1, manual — the Organization is stored with registrationProvider = "manual" and registrationStatus = "registered", and nothing is filed with a registrar. Incorporation through a formation provider (e.g. Stripe Atlas) is still planned; the Company Builder page draws the line exactly. Either way, registering the company is part of the journey, not a side quest.

Platform pieces: Missions · Ideas · Mission Templates

Guides: Platform Tour — every screen and the route it lives at · Teams and Organizations — create the Organization, register the Company, invite people

2. Build — ship the things the goal needs

A goal succeeds when real things exist online. In Ever Works, each of those is a Work.

Works are built from Templates. Websites, blogs, directories, landing pages — and soon stores — start from a base template in the catalog, so you're never staring at a blank page.
One Idea → one Work. Accept an Idea and the platform builds it: researches the topic, writes the content, generates the code, and deploys it to your target.
Everything lives in your Git. Code and content are committed to repositories you own. Nothing is locked in.
Give Works a brain. Each Work has a Knowledge Base — brand voice, SEO rules, personas, research — that every build reads from, so output stays on-brand and gets smarter over time.

Platform pieces: Creating a Work · Website Templates · Knowledge Base · Custom Domains

Guides: Quickstart: Website · Quickstart: Blog · Quickstart: Directory · Quickstart: Landing Page · Quickstart: Awesome List · Knowledge Base and Memory

3. Sell — staff a team and open for business

This is where Ever Works diverges hardest from one-shot builders. A site that exists isn't a business. You need people doing the work — and here, those people are Agents.

Hire an AI organization. Create Tenant-scoped Agents for company-wide roles — a CEO to keep the roadmap coherent, a CTO to own the build, a Researcher to feed Ideas, a Copywriter to keep pages sharp. Ready-made roles ship as templates.
Split global vs. focused. Some Agents work across the whole company; others are scoped to a single Work (a "Blog Editor" for one blog). You decide the org chart.
Give them mailboxes. With Agent Email & Inboxes, Agents send updates and outreach from real addresses and turn incoming mail into work — so sales and support conversations actually happen.
Open a storefront. The planned Store Builder turns a commerce goal into a working storefront that an AI team researches, stocks, writes, and optimizes — built to act on your business, not just advise.

Platform pieces: Agents · Agent Email & Inboxes · Store Builder · Company Builder

Guides: Run Your Business 24/7 with Agents — hire from the Agent catalog, build the org chart, set heartbeats · Teams and Organizations — Teams, the Org Chart, prebuilt companies

4. Scale — let it run, then grow it

The point of all this is leverage: the business should keep moving without you in the loop for every step.

Run 24/7. With Autonomous Operation, Agents and Workers keep writing content, finding products, improving code, generating new Ideas, and redeploying — on a schedule.
Stay in control of spend. Set budgets per Work, Idea, Mission, and Agent, soft or hard, with alerts and auto-pause.
Add Missions and Works as you grow. A successful company runs many Works toward several Missions; the model scales sideways without adding process.
Own it, forever. Because everything is open source (AGPLv3) and lives in your Git, you can self-host, take it onto your own machine with the Desktop App, or move providers at any time. Growth never becomes a lock-in trap.
The Desktop App is in early access. The Electron shell, its first-launch install wizard and both modes are in the monorepo today: local-stack supervises the API on :3100 and the web UI on :3000 on your machine, while remote-client is a native window onto an instance that already runs elsewhere. CI packages Windows, macOS and Linux installers on every change to apps/desktop/** and uploads them as workflow artifacts. What is not there yet: a public download page and an auto-update channel — so today you pull a CI artifact or build it from source.

Platform pieces: Autonomous Operation · Workers · Budgets & Usage · Desktop App

Guides: Run Your Business 24/7 with Agents · Budgets and Guardrails — every ceiling, the approval queue, safe defaults · Desktop App: Local Stack or Client Mode

The whole journey, in one picture

Phase	You do	Ever Works does	Core pieces
Start	Set a goal	Generates Ideas, plans, suggests the entity	Missions, Ideas
Build	Pick what to ship	Researches, writes, codes, deploys from Templates	Works, Templates, KB
Sell	Define the team & offer	Staffs Agents, gives them mailboxes, opens the store	Agents, Email, Store, Company
Scale	Set budgets & let go	Runs everything 24/7, keeps improving	Autonomous Operation, Workers

You can be the solo founder who is all of these roles at once — on top of a platform that does the work. Start with a single Idea, or set a Mission and watch a company take shape.

What is shipped, and what is still coming

Three pieces this playbook names sit at different stages. Here is exactly where each one is, so you can plan around it rather than around a promise.

Piece	Status today	What that means in practice
Company registration	Shipped (v1, manual)	`/new` → Company chip → Register Company creates a real Organization plus a backing `company` Work, stored as `registrationProvider = "manual"`. Incorporation through a formation provider (e.g. Stripe Atlas) is planned.
Desktop App	Early access	The Electron shell, install wizard and both modes (`local-stack`, `remote-client`) are in the repo; CI publishes Windows, macOS and Linux installers as workflow artifacts. No public download page or auto-update channel yet.
Store Builder	Planned	The Store chip telegraphs it on the create surface. The storefront generator and the commerce integrations behind it are on the roadmap.

Everything else this page names — Missions, Ideas, Works, Templates, Knowledge Base, Agents, Teams, budgets, guardrails, autonomous operation — is live today.

The guides behind each phase

Every phase above has a full walkthrough. Read the playbook for the shape, then follow the guide for the clicks.

Phase	Start here
Start	Platform Tour · Teams and Organizations
Build	Quickstart: Website · Blog · Directory · Landing Page · Awesome List · Knowledge Base and Memory
Sell	Run Your Business 24/7 with Agents · Teams and Organizations
Scale	Run Your Business 24/7 with Agents · Budgets and Guardrails · Desktop App: Local Stack or Client Mode

1. Start — turn a goal into a plan​

2. Build — ship the things the goal needs​

3. Sell — staff a team and open for business​

4. Scale — let it run, then grow it​

The whole journey, in one picture​

What is shipped, and what is still coming​

The guides behind each phase​

See also​