FAQ
General
Section titled “General”Is this a SaaS? Can I sign up somewhere?
Section titled “Is this a SaaS? Can I sign up somewhere?”No SaaS. Workforce0 is software you clone and run. A hosted tier may come eventually; not yet.
Do I have to give you any data?
Section titled “Do I have to give you any data?”No. We have no backend. Your install talks to your Postgres and the providers you give it keys for.
How is this different from <other AI product>?
Section titled “How is this different from <other AI product>?”- We don’t host. You host.
- We don’t mark up tokens. You pay providers directly.
- We optimise for a split audience (installer + exec consumer).
- We ship an audit UI, not a chat UI.
Is it free?
Section titled “Is it free?”MIT-licensed software is free. You pay providers for their APIs (BYOK). Your hardware / hosting too.
Does it phone home?
Section titled “Does it phone home?”No. No telemetry. No “check for updates” hitting a central server. Zero outbound traffic that isn’t a BYOK provider call, a configured integration, or an update you explicitly install.
Which provider should I start with?
Section titled “Which provider should I start with?”Gemini free tier. Free, generous enough for evaluation, no credit card. Upgrade to Anthropic or OpenAI once you commit.
Can I mix providers?
Section titled “Can I mix providers?”Yes — see AI Council. Recommended for production.
Can I run it on local models only?
Section titled “Can I run it on local models only?”Yes — specialists can route to Ollama / vLLM entirely. The planner is best on a frontier model; local 13B / 70B models produce plans but often need more revisions. See Local models.
Will I hit rate limits?
Section titled “Will I hit rate limits?”Tier-1 limits on Anthropic / OpenAI are modest. Medium teams should upgrade to tier 2+. Gemini’s free tier has 15 req/min — fine for small teams.
Can I run Workforce0 entirely on subscriptions?
Section titled “Can I run Workforce0 entirely on subscriptions?”Dev / QA tickets can use your Claude Code / Cursor subscription locally (via the agent daemon). Planner calls cannot — they require API-level access. Pair a cheap API key (Gemini free tier) with your local CLI subscription for near-zero spend.
Deployment
Section titled “Deployment”Can I deploy on one VM?
Section titled “Can I deploy on one VM?”Yes. docker compose up, ~4 GB RAM, Caddy in front. Works for a
single team.
What’s the recommended production shape?
Section titled “What’s the recommended production shape?”Backend + frontend on a small VM / pair; Postgres + Redis on a managed service. HTTPS terminator in front (Cloudflare Tunnel is zero-config).
Does it work behind a corporate proxy?
Section titled “Does it work behind a corporate proxy?”Yes — set HTTP_PROXY / HTTPS_PROXY env vars. All outbound calls
respect them.
Can I run it air-gapped?
Section titled “Can I run it air-gapped?”Not fully. BYOK AI calls go to the internet by design. Local models (Ollama) let you air-gap inference, but transcription (Whisper) and integrations (Slack, etc) still need network.
Multi-region?
Section titled “Multi-region?”Sort of — the backend is stateless so you can run replicas in multiple regions pointing at a central Postgres. Queue (Redis) wants to be close to the backend. Most teams don’t need multi-region.
Privacy
Section titled “Privacy”Who sees our data?
Section titled “Who sees our data?”- You: everything.
- The AI providers you configure: whatever’s in the prompts (transcripts, briefs, code context).
- Your integrations (Slack, Jira, Drive): whatever the integration touches.
- Us (Workforce0 maintainers): nothing. We don’t run your instance.
Can I opt out of provider training?
Section titled “Can I opt out of provider training?”Anthropic / OpenAI paid tiers don’t train on your data by default. Gemini’s free tier MAY — upgrade to paid if this matters. Each provider’s page documents details.
Does Whisper keep my audio?
Section titled “Does Whisper keep my audio?”OpenAI’s Whisper: retention per their policy (minimal). Local Whisper: nothing beyond your disk.
Is PII handled specially?
Section titled “Is PII handled specially?”We don’t special-case PII detection. Transcripts often contain it; briefs do too. Treat your install like any system with sensitive data — access control, encryption at rest, backup encryption.
Features
Section titled “Features”Does it replace my PM / engineer?
Section titled “Does it replace my PM / engineer?”No. It decomposes, dispatches, and tracks. Specialists (BA, architect, dev, QA) do the typing but humans approve and review.
Can I customize roles?
Section titled “Can I customize roles?”Yes. Settings → Roles → (pick) → Edit prompt. Changes are tenant-scoped and effective immediately.
Can I write my own integration?
Section titled “Can I write my own integration?”Yes. See Adding an integration.
Does it integrate with <tool X>?
Section titled “Does it integrate with <tool X>?”Check Integrations. If not there, write a PR or open an issue.
Can I use it for personal task management?
Section titled “Can I use it for personal task management?”Technically yes. The exec UX is tuned for team-level decision making — overkill for personal todos. Use Todoist.
Contributing
Section titled “Contributing”Can I submit a PR?
Section titled “Can I submit a PR?”Yes. See Contributing.
What PRs are most wanted?
Section titled “What PRs are most wanted?”- Language extractors for the project graph (Go, Rust, Java).
- Additional integrations (Linear, Asana, Notion).
- Better docs.
- Bug fixes 🙏.
How do I get help?
Section titled “How do I get help?”- Open a GitHub issue.
- Join the community Slack (link in the repo README).
- For security issues:
security@workforce0.com(PGP key in repo).