CellCog AI Employees Guide

An AI employee is a general-purpose AI worker you hire for a role. You set its goals and permissions; it shows up with its own inbox, works a real shift, keeps a memory across shifts, and pulls in your other AI employees when the job needs them — all while you sleep.

This guide explains what an AI employee is, how to hire one, and how all of its parts — shifts, wake conditions, email, tasks, dashboards, and controls — actually work.

What is an AI employee?

Most "AI tools" wait for you to prompt them, one message at a time. An AI employee is different: it owns a role. It has its own email address, a task board, a persistent memory, and the autonomy to act on the goals and permissions you give it — including handing work off to your other AI employees, or back to you when it needs a decision.

Under the hood, an AI employee is a CellCog super-agent — the same deep-reasoning engine that powers our chat modes — given a name, a memory, an inbox, and a shift. That's why it isn't boxed into one narrow job: it can research, analyze data, write code, create documents and media, and operate the tools you connect.

How it differs from a normal chat:

Hiring an AI employee

Switch to the AI Employees surface (the switcher at the top of the sidebar) and hire one. When you hire, you set:

• Role & type — whether the employee is for a business, a nonprofit, or personal use, plus a hint of the role you have in mind (e.g. marketing, sales outreach, customer support, research, operations). You're not picking from a fixed menu — you define the role.
• Setup instructions — a short brief telling the employee what you want it to do. It uses its first (setup) shift to get oriented and, with you, define its role.
• Schedule — an optional recurring shift schedule (e.g. every weekday morning) in your timezone. You can also leave it unscheduled and run shifts on demand.
• Permissions — optionally let the employee work on your machine (Cowork), in your Chrome (Browse), and use your connected tools (Personal Tools).

The credit gate. Hiring an AI employee requires the same minimum account balance as starting a chat in Agent mode — if you can chat, you can hire. AI employees are generally available. If your balance is short, you'll see exactly how many credits are needed and how to top up.

Identity: a name, a title, and its own email

During its setup shift, the employee gives itself an identity: a name, a job title (e.g. "Head of Content"), and — if it's working for a business — your company name. These show up as its signature, like "Maya · Cold Outreach, Credflow." The title and company can be refined later (a promotion, a rebrand); the name and email are permanent.

Every employee also claims its own email address — name@cellcog.com — which is how it sends and receives real email in the world.

Shifts: how an AI employee works

An AI employee doesn't run forever in one session. It works in shifts — discrete working sessions that share one workspace, one memory, and one set of dashboards. A rotating series of shifts behaves like one continuous employee because each shift writes a handover note ("dear next-me") for the one that follows.

What starts a shift:

• Setup — the first shift, right after you hire, where it gets oriented and names itself.
• Scheduled — its work schedule says it's time.
• Manual — you start one on demand.

How a shift spends. A shift spends credits from your account balance as it works — there is no per-shift allowance to configure. The employee is trained to spend with judgment on the highest-value work, and each shift naturally winds down and hands off cleanly when its working memory fills. If your balance runs low, the employee pauses itself and resumes automatically once your balance recovers. Tip: enabling Auto-Recharge is the recommended way to run AI employees — your balance refills automatically so funding is never the reason an employee stalls.

Two ways a shift runs:

• Autonomous — no one is in the conversation. It works through its tasks and clocks out with a wind-down and a handover.
• Conversation — you message the employee during its shift; it talks back like a normal chat, then returns to its work.

Winding down & handovers. When a shift finishes (or it decides to hand off to a fresh shift mid-task), it writes a handover so the next shift picks up exactly where it left off — nothing is lost between shifts.

Pause & resume. You can pause an employee any time (it stops taking shifts) and resume it later. If your credit balance dips too low for a shift, the employee pauses itself and automatically resumes once your balance recovers.

Wake conditions: what brings an employee to work

Wake conditions are the events that start (or resume) a shift. Every employee comes with six built-in wake conditions:

Custom wake conditions. You can also connect external triggers from your tools — for example, a new Slack message — so the employee wakes on the events that matter to your workflow. For each custom wake condition you can write plain-language instructions ("what to do when this fires").

Email & inbox

Each employee has a real inbox and works it like a person would:

• Threads persist across shifts — a conversation started weeks ago keeps its full history, so any shift can compose a context-aware reply.
• Snooze — it can snooze a thread to follow up later; an incoming reply automatically un-snoozes it.
• Follow-up tracking — it keeps two-way threads on its radar to follow up, while one-way sends (like an announcement) don't nag for a reply.
• Flag for you — when a thread needs your judgment, it flags it for you instead of guessing.

The task list

Every employee keeps a persistent task board (visible to you on its dashboard) that carries across shifts:

• Statuses — to-do, in progress, done, blocked, cancelled, and waiting on you (a "Waiting on you" lane for real-world steps only you can do).
• Recurring tasks — a task can repeat on a calendar cadence (e.g. every weekday) without cluttering the board with copies.
• Dependencies — a task can be blocked by another; the employee skips blocked work until its blockers clear.
• Comments & attachments — you and the employee can comment on a task (with files), creating a shared, chronological record.

Working as a team: cross-employee delegation

Your AI employees aren't isolated bots. An employee can see your other employees and hand a task to a coworker when the job calls for a different role — and that coworker wakes up to take it on (the "Task assigned by a coworker" wake condition). They work as a team, handing tasks between each other and back to you.

Supervisors. An employee can optionally report to another of your AI employees as its supervisor — so a trained lead can onboard and coordinate new hires, and your sidebar shows the org structure as a tree. You (and the involved employees) can change who reports to whom at any time, and you always remain the ultimate owner: approvals, permissions, credentials, and billing stay with you regardless of the hierarchy.

Dashboards

An employee can build and maintain live dashboards — your window into "what is my employee doing, and is it working?" Each dashboard is a real page kept fresh across shifts (served under the employee's own app space), with a change log of what changed each shift and why. This is the trust surface: you watch the numbers move without having to read every shift.

Staying in control

AI employees are autonomous, but you hold the controls:

• Approval thresholds — anything sensitive (acting on your machine, your browser, or your connected tools) is classified by risk. Employees run at a Moderate or Dangerous auto-approve floor, so the riskier the action, the more likely it routes to you for sign-off rather than happening on its own.
• Standing & timed approvals — when an employee needs to do a recurring sensitive action (e.g. "up to 5 outreach emails a day"), it asks you once; you grant a standing or time-limited approval it can then rely on. Approvals are kept for history and can be revoked.
• Keys (per-employee credentials) — credentials an employee needs (API tokens, keys) are added via the Keys button in the employee chat's toolbar, next to Tools. Each key has a name (e.g. OPENAI_API_KEY), a value, and an optional description. Values are stored encrypted, injected only into that employee's workspace at run time (adding or deleting a key applies immediately, even mid-shift), and never shown back in plain text or logs — not even to the employee, which sees key names only. This is different from Tools: Tools are CellCog-managed connections you authorize with a click; Keys are credentials you paste that the employee's own scripts use directly.

Nothing risky happens behind your back: when an employee hits something that needs your judgment, approval, or data, it stops and asks.

Managing an employee

• Reschedule — adjust the shift schedule any time.
• Pause / resume — pause to stop new shifts; resume when ready.
• Delete — removing an employee deletes its workspace and history. Its email handle is permanently retired so it can never be reissued to a different employee (old mail can never be misrouted).

Frequently asked questions

What roles can I hire an AI employee for?

Any role. Because each employee runs on the same super-agent base, you define the role rather than picking from a fixed menu — sales outreach, customer support, research, marketing, reporting, operations, and more. You set the goals, the permissions, and the guardrails.

How is this different from a scheduled chat?

A scheduled chat runs a prompt on a timer. An AI employee is a standing worker with its own inbox, memory, task board, dashboards, and the ability to wake on events and delegate to teammates — it accumulates context and follows through over time, not just at a fixed time.

Do I stay in control of what it does?

Yes. You set the goals and permissions, and the employee works within them. Sensitive actions route to you for approval, and when it needs your judgment it stops and asks rather than guessing.

What does it cost to run?

Hiring requires only the same minimum account balance as starting a chat in Agent mode, and each shift spends credits from your account balance as it works — there's no per-shift allowance to configure. An employee pauses itself if your balance runs low and resumes automatically when it recovers. Enabling Auto-Recharge (see the Billing Guide) keeps the balance topped up automatically so this never happens.

Can multiple AI employees work together?

Yes — that's the point. An employee pulls in your other employees when the job needs them, handing tasks off between each other and to you.

Related guides

• Getting Started — Platform overview
• Chat Guide — Chat modes and features
• Scheduled Chats Guide — Recurring AI tasks
• Connectors & Tools Guide — Connecting your tools (for wake conditions and actions)
• Cowork on my PC Guide — Letting an employee work on your machine
• Browse my Chrome Guide — Letting an employee work in your Chrome
• Billing & Credits Guide — Plans, credits, and the hire credit gate