Team structure

Ethos

We work to foster an environment that empowers individuals to build great things, both within and outside the project. Whatever structure we create is in service of this goal.

We make this work through a modern async workflow. The GitLab Way does a great job of formalizing this. If you're keen to operate effectively within our ecosystem, do consider taking a couple of hours to blitz this micro-course. You'll find it boils down to common sense, but common sense is a rare and precious quality!

If you see something misaligned, or find your desire to build blocked, please speak up! We're constantly changing up, growing and evolving, and welcome improvements! (That goes for this wiki too!)

Development roles

The AutoGPT development team uses the following roles:

• Contributor
  AutoGPT would not be where it is without all of its 700+ contributors: people who have submitted pull requests that were accepted & merged. Contributor status doesn't require a time commitment or come with special permissions on the repository, but it is a badge of appreciation and an open door for future contribution/collaboration.

• Catalyst
  Catalysts are contributors who have shown consistent enthusiasm and commitment to the project. They are trusted with greasing the machine that is our community and open-source project, and some have triage permissions on the repo.

  Examples of tasks that Catalysts are in a good position to do:

  • Managing the stream of incoming issues / PRs on GitHub, performing initial scanning and filtering
  • Keeping GitHub issues clean / organized, removing duplications
  • Identifying and cross-linking or grouping related issues
  • Facilitating information flow
    • Communicating with PR authors and team on GitHub and Discord
    • Making sure pressing issues are picked up
    • Keeping an eye on bug reports and feedback

• Maintainer
  Maintainers are responsible for the upkeep and direction of the project: they are in charge of evolving the overall architecture, and they define and guard the project scope and gate-keep the codebase. As such, they provide final feedback on pull requests and merge those that are up to standards and in line with the project's goals. Maintainers are the only people with write permissions on the repo.

  Most of the current maintainers are employees of the company that was spawned from this open-source project in 2023Q3.

Company

In Q3 of 2023, a start-up company was created to give the open-source AutoGPT project a VC-funded backbone, securing the future of the project and boosting its chances of making the vision of AutoGPT a reality.

The company hired most of the maintainers from the open-source project, and started looking for a product-market fit while continuing work on the open-source project.

Today, the company and the project can't be seen separately. The company uses its resources to build the open-source project's original vision for the future of Agentic AI systems, and the company's plans to build that future continue to revolve around the open-source project.