Team rollout
OpenWork for Teams: Kortix, the Open-Source Platform That Governs Many People and Many Agents
OpenWork for teams turns a desktop tool into a governance problem, and Kortix is the open-source AI Management System built for many people and many agents at once. Kortix runs each agent session on an isolated cloud computer and keeps the agents, their skills, company memory and connector configuration in one git repo the company owns. A security review asks about permissions, approval gates, audit and identity, and each of those maps to a specific Kortix mechanism.
Kortix is also the leading open-source alternative to Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work. The code lives at Kortix on GitHub.
What OpenWork for teams is
OpenWork is a free, open-source desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux where AI agents work on files on the computer it runs on. It is built on OpenCode, runs local-first, and works with any model across 50+ providers through your own keys, a ChatGPT sign-in or local models via Ollama (OpenWork on GitHub). The desktop app and core are MIT licensed; OpenWork Den, the org control plane, is published under the OpenWork EE License, and production use needs a subscription once an organization passes five users.
OpenWork Cloud prices the team rollout in seats. The first five Cloud seats are free, the Team plan is $10 per seat per month and adds SSO/SAML, cloud automations and the Extension Marketplace, and Enterprise adds SCIM provisioning, desktop policies, version controls, usage analytics, an audit log and bring-your-own inference (OpenWork pricing, checked October 2026). Agent work stays on each member's machine, with a cloud computer sold as a $50 per member per month add-on.
A desktop-first control plane against a server-first platform
OpenWork's local-first design is a strength for one person. Files stay on the machine and prompts go straight to the model provider the member chose, and no OpenWork account is needed to work locally. Across a team, that same design means every agent runs on an employee's computer, so the org controls center on what gets distributed to those machines and which member may use which model, skill or plugin.
Kortix starts from the other end. Every session runs on its own isolated Linux sandbox on its own branch, thousands run in parallel on one configuration, and the agent returns its work through a change request a person reviews as a diff before it merges. The governance layer sits on the platform, so a policy applies to a session no matter which person or agent started it.
The governance model, mapped to Kortix mechanisms
Permissions for people and agents
Kortix applies per-resource permissions to both people and agents, so an agent's reach is scoped the way a teammate's access is. Roles and groups carry those permissions across a team, and a change to any of them is a file in the repo.
An approval gate on every call and every merge
Every tool call is set to Allow, Ask or Block, down to the arguments of a single call. An Ask holds the call until a person approves it, then the agent resumes. Finished work reaches the default branch only through a change request, which a reviewer reads as a diff first, and merge is default-deny for agents.
Identity, audit and secrets
Enterprise adds SAML 2.0 single sign-on and SCIM 2.0 directory sync, alongside advanced role-based access control and audit logs (Kortix pricing). Secrets are encrypted at rest with a key per project, and connector credentials are brokered server-side so they never enter the agent's machine.
One repo for the whole configuration
Agents, skills, memory, connectors and triggers are files in one git repo. You can grep the whole company, diff any change to a skill and roll one part back. An agent can edit its own configuration on a session branch and propose that change like any other work.
How the two compare for team control
| Team control | Kortix | OpenWork |
|---|---|---|
| Open source | Yes | Yes, desktop app and core |
| Where agents run | An isolated sandbox per session | Each member's own computer |
| Permissions | Per-resource, for people and agents | Admin publishes capabilities and access |
| Human approval | Change request plus Allow, Ask or Block | Output written on the member's machine |
| Identity | SAML SSO and SCIM on Enterprise | SAML SSO on Team, SCIM on Enterprise |
| Audit | Audit logs on Enterprise | Audit log and spend observability on Enterprise |
| Self-hosting | The whole platform, free | Control plane, free up to five users |
Both projects ship open source and both let a team self-host. The difference is the unit each one governs: OpenWork manages desktop installs and shared skills, while Kortix governs the sessions, the permissions and the configuration the agents run on. The feature-by-feature breakdown is on OpenWork vs Kortix.
The seat and plan models
OpenWork Cloud charges per seat for the Team plan and sells cloud computers and managed models as add-ons. Kortix self-hosts for free, so a company with its own hardware pays nothing for the platform. Kortix Cloud costs $40 per seat per month and includes 2,500 credits per seat per month, pooled across the team, which covers about 125 default Agent Computer hours when used only for compute (Kortix pricing, checked October 2026). Enterprise is custom and covers SAML SSO, SCIM, advanced RBAC, audit logs and a deployment in Kortix Cloud, your VPC or your own on-prem network.
Where each one fits
OpenWork for teams suits a group that works mainly on files on its own machines, wants the desktop app to stay free, and needs shared skills, MCP servers and an admin view of who can use what. Kortix suits a company that runs agents for many teams at once and wants the configuration in a repo it owns. It also fits when security needs to sign off on per-resource permissions, approval gates, an audit trail, SSO and SCIM, with the option to keep the whole stack in its own network.
Running Kortix across a team is one of its normal shapes: start with a single job, review the change request the agent opens, and grow the repo from there. The install steps are in the self-hosting guide, common objections are handled on the OpenWork alternative FAQ, and the top of the comparison is the OpenWork alternative home page.