Building blocks

Every agent in Marshal works inside a space: a private environment built from a manifest. Hand a manifest and a task to a run, and an agent does the work on its own. Give a manifest to a deputy, and that work happens again on a schedule, on an event, or whenever someone launches it. Everything else on this page controls what those agents can reach and who can use them.

Want to see the blocks at work first? See what teams build with Marshal.

The map

Your admin builds the stack. Your manifest sits on top of it, with its owner, its credentials bound by name, and its allow list.

You start spaces from the manifest. Runs use it too, each in its own space, and a deputy’s missions start runs for you. When a run has a question, it reaches you on Home and in Slack.

Your admin sets up

Marketplace packages: the agents, tools, toolchains and service connections your organization installs.
Stacks: versioned, published sets of packages. See Manifests and stacks.
Network policy: the addresses each stack’s spaces can reach.
Owners, teams and scope: roles, teams, and who owns what.
Shared credentials for a team or the whole organization.

You use

Manifests: your saved recipe on top of a stack, with your credentials and settings.
Spaces: your own environment, with a terminal, your code and your tools.
Runs: one agent task, start to finish, in its own fresh space.
Deputies: standing definitions whose missions start runs for you.
Home and notifications: everything that needs you, in one list.

Space, run, deputy, mission

These four words are easy to mix up. Each one answers a different question.

Block	What it is	Use it when
Space	A private environment with a workspace, tools and credentials, built from a manifest.	You want to work yourself, in a terminal, and start an agent when you like.
Run	One agent task, done start to finish in its own fresh space. The agent asks you when it needs a decision.	You have one task to hand off and want the result.
Deputy	A standing definition owned by you, a team or the organization: a manifest, memory, missions and what starts them. Every firing starts a run.	The work repeats, reacts to an event, or needs a standing owner and memory.
Mission	A saved, versioned job on a deputy: a prompt, inputs, a time budget, and an optional schedule or event.	You want the same job done the same way each time.

A run is the same thing everywhere. A plain run, a deputy launched by hand, a nightly schedule and a webhook all give you a run you can open, follow, message, take over and continue.

A worked example

Maya leads the Platform team. She wants dependency upgrades every night.

Her admin installs the node and github packages, adds them to the Backend stack, and leaves the stack on the organization’s default network policy, which denies by default.
Maya creates the backend-dev manifest on that stack, owned by the Platform team. She binds the team’s GitHub credential to it.
She tries the job once in a space, then hands the same task to a run to check that it works without her.
She creates a team deputy, binds backend-dev, and saves an “Upgrade dependencies” mission on a nightly schedule.
At 2:00 the mission fires and starts a run. The agent hits a breaking change and asks whether to pin the old version. The question lands on Maya’s Home and in Slack. She taps an answer over coffee, and the run opens the pull request.

Words you will see

Word	Meaning
Organization	Your company’s area in Marshal. People, teams and everything they create live inside it.
Member	A person in your organization. Each member has one role: owner, admin or member.
Team	A named group of members. A team can own manifests, credentials and deputies.
Owner scope	Who an object belongs to: one person, a team or the whole organization.
Package	An installable agent, tool, toolchain or service connection from the marketplace.
Stack	A versioned, published set of packages that manifests build on.
Manifest	A saved recipe for a space: a stack version plus your changes, credentials and settings.
Space	A private environment with its own workspace, tools and credentials.
Run	One agent task, done in its own fresh space.
Deputy	A standing definition with a manifest, memory and missions. Every firing starts a run.
Mission	A saved, versioned job on a deputy.
Credential	A named secret an agent or tool uses, such as a token or an API key.
Connection	A credential you create by signing in to a service. The Connections page lists all your credentials.
Network policy	The rules for which internet addresses a space can reach.

Next steps

New here? Start with Spaces, then try your first task.
Setting up an organization? Read Owners, teams and scope and Marketplace packages.