What ALSTEAD is
ALSTEAD is a bounded hosted workspace for builders running coding agents. ASV Labs builds it.
It is an invite-only web alpha, free while in alpha. Nothing is on sale yet, and a launch date is unset. What is ALSTEAD? covers the definition in more detail.
The site alstead.asv-labs.com opens on a demo of the desk. The demos are labeled simulations. They run in your browser and send nothing.
Request access and sign in
- Request early access from the ALSTEAD page.
- If your address isn't invited yet, you get one reply by email when a seat opens.
- Once you have a seat, sign in with a code sent to your email.
Hire an agent and choose its permissions
Hiring an agent takes three inputs.
- Give it a name.
- Give it a job.
- Tick the tools it may use.
The agent gets an access key of its own. The key is shown once. ALSTEAD stores only a hash and a short prefix.
Tools you don't tick are refused. Some permissions are greyed out because they aren't available in this alpha. For choosing the smallest useful scope, see Connecting tools without over-sharing.
When an agent reaches past its permissions
If an agent tries something you did not allow, the call is refused. A request then lands in Needs you.
The request shows three things:
- The exact action.
- The resource.
- The permission the agent was missing.
You allow that one action or deny it. Allowing adds exactly one permission to that agent's key. ALSTEAD checks permissions again when the agent retries.
Payments, publishing and card use can't be approved at all in this release.
For the general practice behind this, read Human approval for consequential actions and How should AI agent permissions work?
Memory and the ledger
Memory holds facts, people and documents your agents can use. You can add, edit, search, forget and restore items.
Forget hides an item from search and from agents. The record of who wrote it stays.
The ledger shows what your agents did. Operations are written to a log that is only ever added to. It records who did what and how it turned out. It never records message bodies, memory text or keys.
You can filter the ledger by who did it. How do you see what an AI agent did? walks through a ledger row.
Bring your own model key, and what is not in this alpha
You bring your own AI key. Your model provider bills you separately. Work runs use OpenAI Chat Completions with your own key.
These are not in this alpha:
- Messaging on your behalf. iMessage is listed as coming soon.
- Computer use.
- Spending.
- Native apps.
Sandboxes and cloud computers are planned, not available. See Hosted sandboxes and cloud computers.