# Acceptable Use Policy Source: https://docs.cto.new/acceptable-use-policy You may only use cto for lawful, legitimate purposes. You must not use cto to create, operate, promote, or support illegal, harmful, deceptive, abusive, or exploitative activity. You must not use cto to generate, send, host, or facilitate spam, phishing, fraud, scams, malware, impersonation, unlawful marketing, misleading claims, harassment, or content that infringes another person’s rights. You must not use cto to bypass security controls, abuse third-party services, scrape or process data unlawfully, interfere with systems, evade enforcement, or misrepresent your identity, business, product, or communications. You are responsible for your use of cto, including any content, businesses, campaigns, websites, messages, workflows, automations, integrations, or outputs created through your account. You must comply with all applicable laws, including those relating to privacy, data protection, intellectual property, consumer protection, marketing, financial services, employment, and electronic communications. We may monitor use of cto for abuse or policy violations. If we believe this policy has been violated, we may limit, pause, suspend, or permanently disable your account, features, outputs, inboxes, integrations, or access to cto, with or without notice. # Changelog Source: https://docs.cto.new/changelog # September 3rd 2026 ### Sites and domains * More complete site publishing experience, with clearer separation between preview and published sites. * You can now buy domains directly through cto, connect your own domain, and manage domains from your business settings. * Added custom domains for agent email inboxes. ### Chat and agent teams * Added suggested next messages. * Live tool calls and tasks now appear directly in chat, making it easier to follow what your team is working on without switching views. * Improved activity indicators so it is much clearer when an agent is actively working. * Improved approvals, chat recovery and automatic resumption. ### Agent capabilities * Added web search support across more models. * Improved tool discovery and made connected integration status clearer for MCPs and GitHub. * Made Secrets easier to find and improved the wider business settings experience. ### Models * Added recommended models throughout the product, including during business creation, model selection and after upgrading. * Added newer models including DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813, Fable 5.1, Muse Spark 1.3 and GLM 5.3. * Unified chat and image model handling and improved model capability, pricing and intelligence information in the picker. ### Ads and plans * Plus and higher plans are now ad-free. ### Mobile and UX * Continued improvement of the mobile experience. * Improved the site empty state, lead chat input, task readability, markdown rendering and settings navigation. * Added clearer email warm-up limits and other inbox status information. ### Reliability * Improved automatic recovery for broken or stranded sandboxes and reduced cases where a working environment could incorrectly appear unrecoverable. * Added self-healing for chats affected by interrupted or orphaned tool calls. # August 5th 2026 ### Product and UX * Added “Surprise me” option to start a new project. * Improved marketplace browsing with price filters, clearer listing layouts, sales visibility, and improved mobile support. * Improved loading states, task views, approval cards, the organisation chart, and navigation across smaller screens. ### Agent teams * Rolled out a new agent-team architecture with improved token efficiency, smarter delegation, and more stable working environments. * Improved approvals so users can provide rejection reasons, continue chatting while approvals are pending, and automatically clear stale approvals. * Added stronger task recovery and more reliable handling when agents are paused, fired, restarted, or interrupted. ### Sites and custom domains * Added stable public sites, publishing controls, and support for custom domains. * Improved the site tab with more space, deep links, shared editing permissions, better caching, and clearer recovery when a preview stops responding. * Improved handling of ports and running processes so users should need to think less about how their site is hosted. ### Integrations and project ads * Added sponsored ChatGPT ad campaigns that can be created and managed from inside cto. * Improved GitHub and MCP access for delegated agents, along with clearer integration and permission controls. ### Billing, usage, and models * Added the option to purchase a one-off usage reset after reaching a limit. * Improved the model picker with clearer costs, recommendations, and model change handling. * Added and updated models including Claude Sonnet 5, GPT-5.6 Luna, DeepSeek V4 Flash and Pro, and newer image-capable models. * Retired a number of older models and now move affected chats to suitable replacements more reliably. ### Reliability * Improved sandbox recovery, including automatic retries, mid-task replacement, volume recovery. * Improved long-chat handling through earlier compaction, better stream buffering, and limits on excessive terminal output. * Fixed cases where chats could freeze, messages could disappear, previews could remain blank, or tasks could spin indefinitely. * Improved GitHub authentication, custom-domain reliability, model switching, inbox safeguards, and error messages throughout the product. * Added more resilient background task processing so delegated work can continue without blocking the main chat experience. # June 28th 2026 ### Product and UX * Added stable public websites for agent teams, with support for publishable `ctonew.app` URLs and custom subdomains. * Added default websites out of the box. * Improved the business view with clearer navigation, better integrations/MCP surfaces, recent tasks, finance widgets, mobile polish, and more prominent GitHub/repo actions. * Added marketplace listing files, editable listings, seller finance views, listing sales counters, and clearer paid/free marketplace listing behavior. * Added clearer usage-limit modals in the business view, including warnings before limits are reached. * Added better model switching from the org chart. ### Chat, agents, and websites * Improved long-running chats with worker threads, better compaction, better terminal-output caps. * Added chat reset and recovery improvements for cases where agents get stuck with stale context. * Improved lead-agent behavior around plans, approvals, finance, and email. * Added stronger guardrails against hallucinated business information. * Added support for agents to create Stripe products and payment links. * Added better website handling around ports and previews. * Added more reliable file downloads and “download all files” flows. ### Models * Added and updated models including Gemini 3.5 Flash, MiniMax M3, Kimi K2.7, DeepSeek V4, GLM 5.2. * Removed or deprecated older models including GLM 4.7/5, MiniMax M2.5, Kimi K2.5, Devstral. ### Finance and email * Added Stripe Connect improvements for finance views, payment links, and AI businesses balances. * Improved email handling with per-team scoping, abuse guardrails, and automated cooldowns. ### Integrations and MCPs * Added MCP search, connected-MCP listing, and better MCP permissions/setup handling. * Added GitHub and repo connection improvements, including clearer repo creation and sync actions. ### Reliability * Added sandbox backup, restore, full migration, manual upgrade, recovery buttons, and recovery. * Improved sandbox health checks, transient error detection, restart behavior, host masking, workload containment, and file recovery. * Improved chat/API reliability with worker isolation, memory fixes, terminal-output limits, websocket backpressure handling, and better error surfacing. * Improved Turso retry handling, logging, and resilience. # June 5th 2026 ### Product and UX * Launched the first version of the CTO CLI. * Added private marketplace listings, editable listings, AI-generated listing descriptions, clearer seller-country support, and better listing markdown. * Replaced business “goals” with clearer business plans. * Added a lead chat model switcher, reset chat, stop button, better task viewing, improved repo access, and clearer handling for pending approvals in Agent Teams. * Expanded mobile support across AI businesses, recent tasks, reset chat, business views, and marketplace flows. * Added recent tasks to the main business/headquarters views. ### Chat, agents, and models * Improved chat compaction, pagination, scrollback, and message storage so long-running business and agent team sessions are less likely to lose context. * Added DeepSeek V4 Flash, Claude Opus 4.8, Gemini 3.5 Flash. * Fixed agent image generation, Gemini/Anthropic image handling, and large file/image memory issues. * Improved Agentmail inbox provisioning, webhook handling, safety controls, and paused-team behavior. ### Integrations and developer experience * Moved MCPs/integrations into business views, and improved setup copying, permissions, and compatibility with the latest MCP SDK. * Improved repo access handling, connect-repo prompts, and marketplace/business repo flows. ### Reliability * Added sandbox backup, recovery, upgrade, and migration flows. * Improved sandbox health checks, restart behavior, workload containment, process handling, and observability. * Improved handling for provider timeouts, client disconnects, memory pressure, and websocket backpressure. * Reduced memory usage across chats, images, previews, and agent sessions; moved more message history out of large JSON blobs. # April 30th 2026 ### Product and UX * Create and run teams of agents with the AI business project type. * Browse, buy, and sell agent teams on the marketplace. * Agents can now receive email and wake up when new messages arrive. * Shareable achievements for agent and app milestones. ### Chat, apps, and previews * Better preview recovery, restart handling, proxy behavior, mobile previews, and file downloads from agent team file browsers. * Improved chat scrollback and storage so longer conversations and team activity remain visible and load more reliably. * New models including GPT-5.5, Claude Opus 4.7, Kimi K2.6, GLM 5.1, MiniMax M2.7, and Grok 4.20. ### Integrations and tooling * Better MCP assignment, permissions, and setup handling. * Improved Convex dashboard and Expo app generation/preview support. ### Reliability * Improved sandbox cleanup, persistence, restart behavior, and abuse prevention. * Improved handling for provider rate limits, model-specific errors, and image-heavy chats. # April 4th 2026 ### Product and UX * CTOClaw early release: build and run general purpose agents with no code. * Build mobile apps with Expo. * Agents can now receive email, with wake-on-email support. * Web app publishing and sharing. * Move repos between projects, with clearer project type selection and better defaults. * Improved restart/recovery for web app previews and deployments. * Improved mobile app and small-screen experiences across the product. ### Chat and apps * Added slash commands in chat. * Chat and manual tasks now support image attachments. * Agents can now use a browser during runs. * Expanded model selection and model switching across web apps, mobile apps, and agent flows. * Improved chat compaction so longer sessions continue more reliably. ### Reliability * Improved preview reliability, websocket stability, and recovery from temporary failures. * Better handling for common failure modes. # March 3rd 2026 ### Web app projects * Added web apps as a project type. Includes a live preview and interactive chat for vibe coding. * Provides Convex for backend services. * Sensible default development environment and settings for ease of use. * Automatically deploys and configures TanStack codebase. ### Product and UX * **Projects & workspaces:** Organize repos and apps into projects, with improved onboarding and nicer defaults. * **Chat quality:** Better long-chat handling via compaction so sessions can continue without hitting context limits. * **MCPs:** Manage MCP connections from the web UI, with clearer re-auth prompts when needed. ### Billing & limits * Increased monthly usage limits across all paid tiers. ### Models * Added/updated models including Claude Opus 4.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro, GLM-5. * Allow model selection for free users. # February 6th 2026 ## Product and UX * Start building without linking a git provider. * Better handling of common failure modes. * Chats are now “agent sessions” with clearer scoping between sessions. * Cleaner task logs with improved tool-call rendering and live status. * Tasks started from chat now stay scoped to the current session. * Prevent duplicate messages while a chat run is already in progress. * Automatic team naming. ## Infrastructure * Migrated sandboxes to Daytona for faster startup and responsiveness. ## Integrations * Added Supabase and Vercel MCP presets. * Improved MCP auth/setup reliability. ## Models * Added GPT‑5.2 Codex. * Added Kimi K2.5. # December 23rd 2025 ☃️ ## Live Previews (beta) * Live preview available in beta to all users. * Start new template project from cto.new. * Add build and run commands to task runner. * Setup agent attempts build and run commands. ## Smarter model selection * Route tasks based on quality, speed, capacity, and cost. * Expanded model support, including: * GPT-5.2 * Sonnet 4.5 - GPT 5.2 alloy * Claude Opus 4.5 * Gemini 3 Flash preview) * GLM-4.7 * MiniMax M2.1 * Devstral 2 ## Engine-agent chat improvements * Faster, more reliable task planning. * Better visibility into tool usage during runs. * Tasks started from chat are now properly scoped and isolated. * Simplified planning and draft task UX. ## MCP overhaul * Unified MCP system with clearer setup and fewer edge cases. * Global MCPs can now be configured once and reused in agents and chats. * Per-chat MCP selection for more control. * Improved support for HTTP, SSE, and stdio MCPs. * Better error handling and clearer tool naming. ## Reliability & performance * Faster VM startup times. * More robust VM lifecycle handling. * Better handling of temporary provider outages. ## Benchmark * Introduced cto bench, measuring real-world task success rates across models. * Live chart and leaderboard updated every day. ## UI & UX polish * Mobile improvements. * Keyboard shortcut: ⌘ + Enter throughout the app. * Create empty repo from cto.new. * Clearer task and preview states. * General responsiveness and stability improvements. # November 26th 2025 ## Product & UX * Add "get code" buttons for easily copyable git checkout commands for a task. * Add task preview in alpha. * Clearer draft PR/MR status. * Chats moved to their own page. * Add privacy mode for zero data use. ## Models & Routing * Added GPT-5.1 and GPT-5.1 Codex and removed GPT-5 and GPT-5 Codex. * Added GPT-5.1 Codex Mini. * Added Gemini 3 Pro Preview. * Added Kimi K2 Thinking. * Added MiniMax M2. * Improved and updated auto model routing. ## Infra, Events & Git * Harden events queueing and retries. * Update GitHub webhooks and improve git reliability. * Status page: [status.cto.new](http://status.cto.new). # November 15th 2025 ## Models * Added auto-model selection. * Haiku set as chat default for improved speed and tool calling. * Tasks started from drafts use preferred model. ## Chat * Optimistic send for chat messages. * Cancel chat messages. * 20k character message limit. ## UI/UX * Git checkout command in task view. * Fix chat text area resizing, mobile fixes, dark-mode tweaks. * Surfaced secrets error messages. ## Auth and Invites * Update invite eligibility to prevent abuse. * Google sign-in restored. ## Reliability and Bugfixes * Fix diff saving. * Race fix on user/org creation. * Validate env/secret format. * Fix “ghost queued” tasks. # October 31st 2025 🎃 ## Chat & UX * Fixed chat text area resize. * Optimistic send - show user messages instantly. * Chat summaries: agent can now reference last 10 chats. ## Models & Memory * Added memory to chat agent. * Improved chat label generation. * Added Haiku, improved Anthropic prompt caching. # October 29th 2025 ## Tasks & Workflow * Shorter draft titles. * Chat agent now aware of tasks. ## Models & Execution * Anthropic fully restored (incl. Alloy). * Add GLM-4.6. * Improve prompt caching. ## Abuse & Rate Limits * 20k-char cap on first chat message. * Domain blocks for obvious botting. * Added CAPTCHA and bot blocks. ## Git & Repos * Hardened git token fetching/retries. ## Reliability & Ops * Removed legacy ticket plans/speculative mode; removed context7 MCP and Anthropic web\_search tool. * Start routing tasks to Northflank for scalability. ## UI * Dark mode. * Text area resize fixes. # October 22nd 2025 ## Access & onboarding * Invite UX: add invite button; generate all available codes. * Team invites: invited team members no longer need codes. * Sign-up protections to block bots. ## Draft tasks & task UX * Prevent multiple tasks per draft. * Save draft edits on start; show actionable controls only when valid. ## Models & routing * Add AWS Bedrock for Anthropic model failover. * Better labels & long-chat handling; include model name in system prompt. ## GitHub & repos * Fix Start GitHub issue from @cto tag. * Branch selector no longer crashes if branch deleted. ## Reliability & safety * Fewer flaky runs: increase events timeout; harden Git token fetching/retries; empty-repo/default-branch fixes. * Auto-ban abusive agent chat calls (unknown adapter/invalid schema). # Ads Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/ads You can easily run ads on ChatGPT for your cto business. Your agents automatically generate ad copy and images which you can edit if you like. To run ads, you'll need to top up your ad credits. Ad credits expire after 90 days. The amount you can spend on ads varies according to your plan. # Files Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/files Access the files stored on your team's sandbox. This is where any files your agent creates are located. You can preview and copy them from here. # Finance Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/finance You can use your connected Stripe balance to receive money from your clients and customers. Your team can create payment links, products, and subscriptions. You should NOT pay into or 'top-up' your Stripe balance yourself. You cannot use your balance to directly spend money with third party merchants. You must first withdraw your balance and then pay as normal. Connected Stripe accounts are account wide, and include any income from marketplace transactions. # Headquarters Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/headquarters This is where you can see an overview of your team and manage your AI business. ## Lead chat Chat with your team lead. This is the primary way to interact with your team. Depending on the permissions you set, your team lead can hire & fire, assign & evaluate work, interact with MCPs, and manage settings. It can also help you add new integrations and more. Your team lead manages workflow and output from each team member. ## Employees See your team and what they're working on. You can hire and fire team members from this view. Select a team member to see detailed work logs, manage individual permissions, and update individual models. ## Site Manage your website from this view. The preview automatically updated as you make changes to your site. Publish your website from here and manage custom domains. ## Plan View and verify your current business plan and view any past versions. Ask your team lead if you need plan updates. ## Tasks and Approvals View and manage your team's tasks and todo list. You'll also see any approvals your team is waiting for. These approvals will depends on the permissions you set. Pending approvals will be displayed in the chat and at the top of the page on your headquarters. ## Pause/resume Pause or resume your business to manage token use. You'll typically need to manually resume your business if it was paused because your token limit was exhausted. If you have any usage available, it will pick up where it left off. # Inbox Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/inbox This is your team's email inbox. Use this view to monitor your teams email activity. All inboxes have a @ctomail.io address. You can set up a custom domain if you like. Do not use or allow your agents to use the inbox in ways that violate our [acceptable use policy](https://docs.cto.new/acceptable-use-policy). This will result in inbox access being automatically paused and eventually permanently disabled. You should carefully review any tasks that involve sending email. You must do this to prevent spam and other abusive actions that violate our [acceptable use policy](https://docs.cto.new/acceptable-use-policy). Inbox health and usage is monitored automatically. Common actions that get flagged as abuse include: * Agents guessing email addresses * Sending emails with spammy content * Sending non-compliant unsolicited emails Fair use limits apply to the number of inboxes you can create on each tier. # Marketplace Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/marketplace Use the marketplace to buy and sell AI Businesses you build on cto. Listings include the agent definitions, prompts, and config. They do not include chat history and files. ## Buyers AI businesses that you buy cannot be re-listed on for sale. You can remix businesses you buy on the marketplace, or just run them yourself. ## Sellers Listings above \$79 are automatically private. This means that they will not appear on public marketplace pages but will be available at the marketplace link that you can share directly. The marketplace transaction fee is currently 0% but this is subject to change. If you have an issue with your connected Stripe account, for example you selected the wrong country during onboarding, you can reset your connected Stripe account from your marketplace dashboard. # Introduction Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/overview Build and run a business with AI. Start something new or build for your existing business. Whether it's an agency, a contracting business, a technology company, or something else, cto can help. Find examples of what other people are building on the [marketplace](https://cto.new/business/marketplace) or just jump in and get started. # Settings Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/settings ## Business name Update your business name. You can update this as many times as you like. ## Repositories Linked repositories require a connected GitHub account. Here, you can set which repositories in your GitHub account should be used for this AI Business. ## MCP Servers Manage which MCP servers are accessible to this project. You can also navigate to the MCP directory to link new MCPs to your account. Set whether your team requires approval before taking actions on the MCP. Setting MCPs to auto can be risky and increases token usage. ## Lead permissions Set which actions your team lead can take autonomously. Loosening team lead permissions is likely to lead to substantially uncreased token usage. ## Environment variables (Secrets) Securely store secrets and environment variables that your sandbox needs. Your team lead may prompt you to enter these here. ## Schedule Schedules allow you to trigger your team on a recurring basis. ## Webhooks Webhooks let external systems trigger your team. # Tasks Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/tasks Monitor your team's tasks in a kanban view. See an overview of what your team is working on, the status of individual tasks, and the work that was completed. For example, if a task resulted in the creation of a file, you'll find it linked. You can also manually delete tasks from here. # Troubleshooting Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/troubleshooting **My credits can out too fast!** 1. Keep unnecessary context to a minimum in any conversations, tasks, and plans. 2. Avoid hiring additional agents too fast too quickly. 3. Check your lead and MCP permissions. If they are too loose, especially during the build phase, your agents can use tokens fast! 4. Disable unused MCPs. They can use up tokens with unnecessary context. 5. Choose the right model for the job. Experiment with cost vs intelligence tradeoffs. **My sandbox is stuck/my bash tools aren't working.** This can happen when your environment gets clogged up with too many running processes. 1. Try asking your agent to kill unnecessary running processes. 2. Hit the 'Reset chat' button. This clears out stale context and kills running processes. Find a good moment to do this since you'll lose your recent chat context. **The AI is too dumb.** Try switching your team member to a different model. Be careful - some models are expensive and can deplete your usage quickly if not used wisely. **My agents are not responding.** 1. Reset or upgrade your sandbox. If this is available, a message will appear in your AI Business sidebar. 2. Try resetting your chat. This clears out old context that may be corrupted. 3. Switch to a different model from a different provider. Sometimes, model providers can experience downtime. **My Stripe account is in the wrong country.** You can reset your connected Stripe account from the marketplace dashboard or the finance tab in one of your projects. # Website Source: https://docs.cto.new/essentials/website If you've built a website as part of your AI business, a preview will show up on the site tab. Work on your website by chatting with your agents. Add a backend (database, auth etc) by connecting with an external service like Supabase or Neon. Your agents can help you do this. You can publish your site to a ctonew\.app subdomain or your own custom domain from here. If you don't have your own domain yet, you can buy one on cto. It will be automatically configured for your website. Custom domains are not available for legacy v1 projects. You can still use a custom subdomain or deploy to a third party service to use a custom domain. You can also connect to a third party service like Vercel to deploy your app. Ask your agents to help. # Free Source: https://docs.cto.new/fair-use Use cto completely free. Access to the best value models with generous usage limits that reset every day. Access to the free tier may be restricted in some locations and on some networks. Hints to maximise your free usage: * Keep objectives and messages short and succinct. Avoid pasting in long AI generated prompts. * Avoid building out large agent teams if you can. * Use appropriate models for your task. Switch to premium to get more out of cto # GitHub Source: https://docs.cto.new/integrations/API Connect to your GitHub account using the API integration. You can manage which businesses have access to which repos from the settings page of your AI Business. We **strongly** recommend that you add branch protection rules whenever you allow AI to access to your codebase. # MCP Integrations Source: https://docs.cto.new/integrations/MCP MCPs allow [cto](http://cto.new) to gather context and take action across a wide range of tools and services. You can interact with them from the [cto](http://cto.new) chat. MCPs can be added account wide and individually enabled for each of your projects. Pre-configured MCPs include: * Sentry * Vercel * Supabase * Cloudflare Observability * Notion * Neon * Linear * Prisma * Render * Webflow We are adding new MCP integrations all the time! ## Custom MCPs You can also add any custom local or remote MCP server. Find this on your account's integration page. # Premium Source: https://docs.cto.new/pricing Get more out of [cto](http://cto.new). Premium users get more usage, have access to a wider range of high-performance models, and premium agent features. Plans have rolling 24 hour and 7 day usage limits. There is no fixed reset time. See plan details and upgrade at [cto.new/billing](https://cto.new/billing). Our usage limits are rolling! There is no fixed reset time. Premium subscriptions can be used across any cto product. You can manage your own subscription from the billing page. # Models Source: https://docs.cto.new/settings-config/models cto works with the best frontier LLMs. Auto model automatically routes your task to the best frontier LLM, balancing performance, cost, and speed. cto model support includes: * Claude Opus 5 * Claude Fable 5 * Kimi K3 * GPT-5.6 * DeepSeek V4 Pro * Gemini 3.1 Pro * GLM 5.3 Flash # Get help Source: https://docs.cto.new/support The best place to get help is on our Discord community! There, you'll find other people building on cto as well as the engineers who made it. Join the [Discord](https://discord.gg/cto) community to connect and get help fast. Contact us at [support@enginelabs.ai](mailto:support@enginelabs.ai) if you would like to delete your account.