Cats

What a Cat is

A Cat is an agent with a mission in plain words. It wakes on a schedule or when something happens, does the work without you watching, and reports in its own chat and in your inbox.

Each Cat has:

• a mission: what it looks after, and what a good result looks like;
• what wakes it: a schedule, a new email, a new post in a feed, a web page that changes, or files that change in a folder;
• a brain: the agent it thinks with, its model and, if you like, a project it shares with you;
• a space of its own: a working folder, a browser profile and its own memories;
• its freedom: how much it may do without asking, its daily limits, the sites it may visit and the connectors it may use;
• a chat of its own, where its reports go and where you can write to it.

Open Cats in the sidebar to see them all, with what wakes each one and what it did last.

Make a Cat

From the Cats page

Press New Cat. It takes four short steps:

1. Mission: a name, a picture and what it looks after.
2. Wakes up: a time, or something it watches for.
3. Brain & space: which of your agents it thinks with, and where it works.
4. Freedom: how much it may do before asking you, and its daily limits.

You can start from an example: an Inbox Cat that sums up your unread email every weekday at 8:00, a Watcher Cat that tells you when a page changes, a News Cat that picks the best posts from a feed, or a Tidy Cat that sorts new files in a folder.

The Cat works without you watching, so write the mission as complete instructions. Say what it should do and what a good result looks like.

From a chat

Ask in any chat, for example “every weekday at 8am, summarise my email” or “tell me when this page changes”. The agent sets up the Cat for you. Making a Cat is a step the agent asks about first, so ask in Action mode.

A Cat can't create, change or wake other Cats. Only you can, from the Cats page or a chat.

What wakes a Cat

A Cat can have several wake-ups. Writing to it in its chat always wakes it too.

The first look at an inbox, feed, page or folder only takes note of what is there. The Cat wakes on the next change, not on everything already there. On a saved watcher, Look now checks straight away.

Schedules

In the editor, pick Once, Daily, Weekdays, Weekly (with the days) or Every N hours (1 to 168), or open Cron expression. In a chat, plain words work too:

• Without a time, a schedule runs at 9:00. “Morning” means 8:00, “afternoon” 14:00, “evening” 18:00 and “night” 21:00.
• A schedule repeats at most every 15 minutes.
• Times are in this computer's time zone, unless you ask the agent for another one, such as Europe/London.
• If Asyncat was closed or the computer was asleep when a run was due, the run is made up once when Asyncat is back, as long as it is less than 12 hours late. Older ones are skipped, and the Cat's timeline says so.

A Cat never runs twice at once. Something that wakes it during a run waits and wakes it again when the run ends; a schedule that comes round during a run is skipped. At most two Cats work at the same time, and the others wait their turn.

Brain and space

Two things are always its own:

• Its own browser. It browses with a profile of its own, so the sites it signs in to aren't shared with you or other Cats. To sign it in, open its page and choose Open its browser to sign in from the menu.
• Its own memories. What it learns, and your ratings and “next time” notes, stay with it. Your chats don't see them. See and edit its memories opens them on the Memory page.

Freedom and limits

Nobody is watching a Cat's run, so its freedom decides which steps it takes alone and which wait for your OK.

Whatever its freedom, a command asks first while the command sandbox is on but can't start. See Privacy & safety.

• When it asks, wait for your answer for: 30 minutes, 2 hours (the default), 8 hours or a day. After that it carries on without that step.
• Daily limits: runs, tokens, minutes of work and spend in dollars, at a price per million tokens you enter (local models are free). Leave one empty for no limit. When a limit is reached, the Cat stops for the day and tells you in the inbox.
• A single run stops after 30 minutes of work. Time spent waiting for your answer doesn't count.
• Sites it may visit: leave empty to allow any site. example.com also covers its subdomains. Sites on your list of sites agents never open stay closed to every Cat.
• Tools it may always use without asking: on top of what its freedom allows. Answering Always allow in the inbox adds a tool here, and Settings → Privacy & safety lists them all with a way to take them back.

Runs and the inbox

Each run reports in the Cat's chat and in the inbox at the top of the Cats page, and can show a desktop notification. Choose which in Settings → Notifications.

What needs you

When a Cat needs your OK or an answer, the run pauses and the item waits under Waiting for you:

• An approval shows the step. Choose Allow once, Always allow, or Don't allow with an optional note on what to do instead. A file change has Show the change.
• A question takes a written answer. If nobody answers in time, the Cat uses its default answer or carries on with its best judgement and says what it assumed.

Rate a run

Mark a result Good result or Not what I wanted, and add a Next time… note. The Cat keeps your rating and note as a memory of its own and follows it in later runs.

A Cat's page

Open a Cat to see its mission, what wakes it, its brain, its space and its freedom, and to change any of them. From there you can:

• press Run now, Write to it or Stop;
• turn it on or off with its switch (turned back on, it doesn't make up what it missed while off);
• follow its timeline, run by run: what woke it, the pages it visited, the files it changed and what it asked;
• press Undo file changes on a run, which puts the files in its folder back as they were before that run;
• open its folder, or delete it. Deleting stops it and removes its runs, inbox items and browser sign-ins. Its chat stays in your chats.

Keeping Cats working

Cats only work while Asyncat is running. Settings → General → When you close the window decides what closing the window does:

On a Mac, closing the window leaves Asyncat running, as Mac apps do. In the installed app, Start Asyncat when you log in opens it in the tray without a window, so Cats keep working after a restart. The tray menu also opens the Cats page.

If the tray icon is missing on Linux, see Troubleshooting.