Core concepts
The OpenAgent object model: workspaces, businesses, services, doors, agents, workflows, and how they fit together.
View as MarkdownEverything in OpenAgent hangs off one tree. Understanding it makes the rest of the docs read easily:
Workspace you, your team, billing, API keys
└── Business one company's whole front office
├── Services the doors + desks you've added
│ ├── Website chat (has its own AI agent)
│ ├── AI receptionist (has its own AI agent)
│ ├── WhatsApp · Instagram · Messenger · SMS
│ ├── CRM · Help desk · Scheduler
│ └── …
├── Agents the AI brains the services share
├── Knowledge what the AI knows (business-wide)
├── Workflows trigger → steps automations
├── Contacts every person, deduplicated
├── Campaigns outbound on top of services
└── Back office the AI that works ON the businessWorkspace
The account level: members, roles, billing, and API keys. An owner-operator has one workspace with one business. An agency has one workspace with a business per client — each client's numbers, members, and billing kept separate. See Members & roles.
Business
One company's complete front office. Everything a customer touches — and everything the company knows about its customers — is scoped to the business: its knowledge, its contacts, its boards, its workflows, its phone numbers.
Service
A capability you add to a business. Service types: chatbox (website chat), receptionist (AI phone), whatsapp, instagram, messenger, sms, crm, helpdesk, scheduler, calendar. Some services are doors (customers come through them); others are desks (they organize what came in).
Agent
The AI brain behind a door. Website chat and the receptionist each get a backing agent automatically when you add the service. An agent owns its persona, voice, tools, and guardrails, and draws on the business's shared knowledge. One agent can carry many conversation flows routed by "use this when…" conditions. See Agents.
Door vs. desk
| Doors (customers arrive) | Desks (work gets organized) |
|---|---|
| Website chat, AI receptionist, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, SMS | CRM (boards & deals), Help desk (tickets), Scheduler (bookings), Contacts |
| Each door has an agent answering on it | Each desk receives from every door |
| Workflows are siloed per door — a flow belongs to the channel it was written for | One inbox, one board, one contact list — shared across all doors |
Workflow
A graph of steps the AI follows — either routed into conversations on a door ("use this flow when the caller wants to book") or fired by a trigger (a call goes unanswered, a form is submitted, a card moves). Workflows are versioned: you edit a draft, test it, then publish. See Workflows.
Contact
A person, deduplicated across every door — matched by phone, then email, then external ID. Contacts refill themselves from sheets, CRMs, and webhooks; DND is one switch on the person; every deal carries first-touch attribution. See Contacts.
Back office
The other half of the product: an AI operator that works on the business — "chase everyone who never heard back", "reconcile Stripe against the board", "send me a Monday report". It runs with connections to 235 integrations, pauses for approval before anything changes, and can repeat on a schedule. See Back office.