The operating system for human-AI teams.
Tropo-OS turns a shared folder into a governed multi-agent system. No code. No server. No database. Describe how you work — the system captures it, and your expertise runs without you.
You need a folder-aware AI tool — one that can read and write files on your computer. Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Cursor, or similar.
- Download and unpack this vault
- Open your AI tool and point it at this folder
- Say: "read START-TROPO.md"
Your vault concierge will greet you and walk you through setting up your first agent.
- Agents as files. A markdown file with structured metadata. Create the file and the agent exists.
- Governance built in. Every agent has a scope, a governor, and rules. Authority flows from your operating agreement.
- Memory that survives. When a session ends, the work persists. When an agent is replaced, knowledge transfers. Memory lives in your studio's files, not in any one AI tool — switch tools and lose nothing.
- Work management built in. Tropo Work — tasks, boards, and projects — ships with every vault. See
vault/files/d61ce0a7.md. - Your rules, your way. You define how your agents work, what they can access, and what "good" looks like.
When Tropo updates itself, here is our guarantee:
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We only replace what we shipped. Every Tropo studio carries a packing slip — the complete list of files we put in the box, each with a fingerprint. An update may only touch files on that list. Everything else is yours, and updates cannot reach it.
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We never change what you wrote. Your words, your data, your decisions — byte for byte. The one thing your studio adds to files it governs is navigation (the small "you are here" panel that makes every file findable). That is your studio working for you, not an update changing your work — and the receipt discloses exactly where it happened.
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When in doubt, we ask you first. If a file we shipped looks like you've modified it, or an update wants to write where something of yours already lives, the update stops and asks — file by file, every time. It cannot decide your answer for you.
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You get the receipt. After every update: what was replaced, what was asked and answered, and fingerprints proving your content is unchanged — checkable by you, with your own tools, without trusting ours.
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If anything fails, we say so. A failed update quarantines itself with a full report. No silent halfway states, no automatic do-overs without you.
This is not a feature. It is the contract that makes Tropo an operating system you can let update itself.
Updates are offered by Po, your studio concierge, when you start a session — and every apply writes its receipt into vault/updates/ in your own studio.
Your studio can run its own routine upkeep: checking that its index is healthy, that nothing has drifted out of place, and whether a Tropo update is available. None of it runs until you say so. A fresh studio arrives with all upkeep set to ask first — when something is due, Po mentions it in one line and waits for your go.
During onboarding, Po has one honest conversation with you about it: what the upkeep does, roughly what it costs in AI time, and three ways to set it — ask-first every time, run the routine checks automatically, or not at all. Whatever runs leaves a receipt in your studio: what ran, what it found, what it spent. The same promise that protects your files protects your wallet — nothing spends silently.
Agent memory lives in your studio's own files — not inside any one AI tool. Switch between Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or whatever comes next, and your agents keep everything: what they learned, what they were doing, who they are. The AI tool is the engine you plug in; the memory rides with the studio you own.
- A folder-aware AI tool (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Windsurf, or any AI with filesystem access)
- That's it
- tropo-ai.com
- The Agentic Builders — our newsletter for non-technical leaders building with AI
Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE for the full text. See ADR 4a4a1235 for the license-reversal decision record (AGPL-3 → Apache 2.0 at v1.41.0; 2026-05-18).
Tropo-OS v1.84.1 | The file is the agent. The folder is the workspace. The vault is the OS.