Y Combinator has released QM, the multi‑agent harness it uses internally, as an open source project under the MIT license. QM runs in Slack and on the web and gives each employee an isolated workspace that cannot be affected by others. Every person and every room gets its own memory, files, keychain view, permissions, background jobs, web apps and a durable sandbox where installed tools stay installed. This solves the common problem of personal assistants that become unwieldy when stretched across an entire organization, because QM provides scope‑owned isolation while still allowing collaboration in shared channels, group messages and projects.
The harness is vendor‑agnostic. Pi, OpenCode, Codex and Claude Code can all drive the same headless core, so teams avoid lock‑in to a single AI provider. Security is handled through three org‑wide postures—Strict, Auto and Dangerous—each of which can be tightened by narrower scopes. A predeclared command policy blocks destructive actions like recursive deletes or harmful SQL in every posture, while the Auto posture adds a classifier screen for external data and tool results.
Deployment is straightforward for organizations that have a cloud account, Postgres and someone comfortable with infrastructure. There are two paths: a deployment directory that depends on the published @yc-software/qm package and requires no source checkout, or a private fork for teams that want core and customizations in one repository. Initialization walks through infrastructure, sign‑in, connectors, optional Slack access and live verification, all running in the operator’s own cloud account.
Ideal users are startups or mid‑sized companies (10‑500 people) in venture, professional services, fintech, accounting, legal, events or B2B SaaS that need internal tooling for searching notes, triaging inboxes, running tests, opening PRs, monitoring CI or tracking projects in shared channels. QM is still early and has bugs, but it offers a practical, self‑hosted way to bring scoped, secure and flexible AI assistance to the workplace without sacrificing control or incurring vendor lock‑in.
Learn more at https://github.com/yc-software/qm #AI #Productivity #DevTools #Automation #Security #OpenSource