# Busabase

Busabase is the system of record for AI agents — an open-source (MIT) database and workspace where agents and people share the same data, docs, skills, and apps. Run it on your own machine, self-host it inside your network, or use Busabase Cloud. Every change keeps its history, and the writes that matter can wait for a person to review.

## What Busabase is

Busabase is a system of record for AI agents: the place where the business facts an agent
produces are stored, attributed, and treated as authoritative. An agent connected to a Busabase
workspace does not write to a table invisibly — it opens a Change Request, so every fact arrives
with a message, a diff and an author. Whether that request applies straight away or waits for a
human is set by the credential's permission level, so you can hold back exactly the data that
warrants it. Merged records keep their provenance (which agent, which request, which reviewer)
and their full history, including rejected versions.

This is distinct from an "Agent System of Record" in the Workday sense, which governs the agents
themselves — their identity, permissions, and performance. Busabase governs what the agents wrote.

Review is proportional, not universal: a credential with write access applies its changes
straight away, and only credentials you have not trusted with write access wait for a person.
Busabase is a workspace agents build on, not an approval queue.

Agents connect over MCP, an agent skill, or the OpenAPI surface.

## Where your data lives

- Open source under the MIT license: https://github.com/busabase/busabase
- Busabase Desktop and the open-source server (npm `busabase`, Docker image `busabase/busabase`)
  store data on your own machine by default (`~/.busabase/data`; `/data` in Docker). There is no
  usage telemetry, and it works offline.
- Self-host it with Docker inside your own network. Nothing about the open-source edition requires
  Busabase Cloud or a Busabase account.
- Busabase Cloud is the hosted option, for teams that want to collaborate without running a server.
- Outbound connections worth knowing about in the open-source edition: a package update check
  (npm registry; set `BUSABASE_NO_UPDATE_CHECK=1` to turn it off), the desktop app's update check,
  the template catalog (GitHub, only when you open it), and the AirApp runtime and API docs page,
  which load scripts from public CDNs. None of these send your workspace data. What does send data is only what you set up yourself: an LLM provider for your agents, or
  Cloud Connect to reach a local workspace from Busabase Cloud.
- Security notes for self-hosting: https://busabase.com/docs/self-hosted/security

## Documentation

- [Full Documentation](https://busabase.com/llms-full.txt)
- [Docs](https://busabase.com/docs)

## Quick Links

- [Get Started](https://busabase.com/docs)
- [System of Record for AI Agents](https://busabase.com/system-of-record-for-ai-agents)
- [Connect your agent](https://busabase.com/connect-agents)
- [API Documentation](https://busabase.com/api/v1/doc)
- [GitHub (open source, MIT)](https://github.com/busabase/busabase)
- [Partners program](https://busabase.com/partners) — affiliates earn 30% of first-year revenue (180-day window); solutions and technology partners

## How an agent connects

If you are an agent reading this, these are the four entry points that actually connect you to a
workspace. Everything above describes Busabase; these let you use it.

- [Setup document](https://busabase.com/SETUP_SKILL.md) — the one-time onboarding document. An agent can read
  it start to finish and end up connected, with a first Base seeded when needed. It reuses an
  existing Busabase MCP integration when available or signs in through the CLI, then installs the
  permanent Busabase skills for future sessions regardless of the connection transport.
- [MCP endpoint](https://busabase.com/api/mcp) — the Model Context Protocol server, for clients that register
  Busabase as a set of tools rather than calling it over HTTP.
- [OpenAPI contract](https://busabase.com/api/v1/openapi.json) — the complete machine-readable description of
  every endpoint, for generating a client or checking one endpoint's exact arguments. It is browsable
  at [https://busabase.com/api/v1/doc](https://busabase.com/api/v1/doc).
- `npx --yes busabase-cli@latest` — the command line client, for agents that work in a shell. It
  needs no install step, and `busabase-cli skill` prints that same skill document offline, so an
  agent that has the CLI already has the instructions.

### Connecting without remote instructions

Teams that do not let agents follow instructions fetched from a URL can skip the setup document
entirely. Install a pinned CLI version from npm, then run `busabase-cli skill install`: it writes
the skill file into your agent's skills directory, generated locally from the CLI itself and bound
to your own Busabase host. Review the file like any other code, and nothing is re-fetched at
session time. Busabase Desktop and self-hosted servers serve their own setup document from your
host, never from busabase.com.