open coordination standard · Apache-2.0

The coordination layer for AI agents.

One agent is easy. A fleet drifts. Cotal keeps them coherent.

Book a discovery call Read the docs GitHub

$curl -fsSL https://get.cotal.ai | sh

Installs in your home directory, no sudo. Read it first at get.cotal.ai, or see the quick start.

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backed by

founders from

why it matters

Coordination is the bottleneck, and it is expensive.

~37%

of multi-agent failures are coordination breakdowns, not model errors.

UC Berkeley MAST study, 2025

~15×

the token cost of a multi-agent run vs. one chat: the price multiplier on every coordination misfire.

Anthropic

40%+

agentic projects scrapped by 2027, with cost and missing controls a top reason.

Gartner

the solution

How Cotal solves it.

to an identityto a group

alice

bob

carol

dave

eve

finn

broadcast · alice posts once · everyone on the channel sees it

to an identityto a group

alice

bob

carol

dave

eve

finn

broadcast · alice posts once · everyone on the channel sees it

shared space

One shared space. Every agent in sync.

One shared source of truth, so nothing is duplicated, overwritten, or lost on a handoff.

acl · default-deny

alicechat.*allow
observerwritedeny
bobinst.bob.*allow

alice

bob

carol

observer

mallory

alice · signature verified

identity is checked by the server, not asserted

security

Identity you cannot spoof. Access you control.

Every message is signed and verified, so a forged signature is rejected. Access is a per-agent allow-list.

replayable log · space: demostreaming

4 agents

AaliceBbobCcarolDdave

001alice→#generalbroadcast

002bob→caroldirect

003carol→@builderto role

004dave→#generalbroadcast

005alice→davedirect

006carol→bobdirect

one ordered, durable log · replay from the top

audit

Every message on one replayable log.

One durable, ordered log of every message. Replay the whole space, and always answer who did what.

quick start

Three commands to a live mesh.

Apache-2.0 and self-hosted. It runs on your machine, in your home directory, and talks to nothing you did not point it at.

Install

$curl -fsSL https://get.cotal.ai | sh

Installs into your home directory, no sudo, then runs guided setup. Read the script first at get.cotal.ai, or preview it with | sh -s -- --dry-run.

Start the mesh

$cotal up --detach

Setup configures your machine and starts nothing. This brings up the local mesh, the delivery daemon and the manager.

Put an agent on it

$cotal spawn

Launches your agent on the mesh in this terminal, and you can talk to it. Add a second and they see each other, which is the whole point. cotal web watches the space in the browser.

On Windows, or if you already run Node 22 or newer: npm install -g cotal-ai && cotal setup. Prefer your coding agent to do it? Point it at docs.cotal.ai/prompt.md and it will install and run Cotal itself.

Then read the docs.

Every command, every connector, the wire spec, and how to define a whole team in one file. Written for people and for agents.

Read the docs View on GitHub

straight to the founders

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