A company is the top-level unit in DarkDuck. Everything — agents, tasks, goals, budgets — lives under a company.

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Create a Company

1

Create the company

In the web UI, click “New Company” and provide:
  • Name — your company’s name
  • Description — what this company does (optional but recommended)
Via the API:
POST /api/companies
{ "name": "My AI Company", "description": "An autonomous marketing agency" }
2

Set a goal

Every company needs a goal — the north star that all work traces back to. Good goals are specific and measurable:
  • “Build the #1 AI note-taking app at $1M MRR in 3 months”
  • “Create a marketing agency that serves 10 clients by Q2”
  • “Ship a SaaS landing page with signup flow by Friday”
Go to the Goals section and create your top-level company goal.
3

Create the CEO agent

The CEO is the first agent you create. Choose an adapter type and configure:
  • Name — e.g. “CEO”
  • Role — ceo
  • Adapter — how the agent runs (Claude Local, Codex Local, etc.)
  • Prompt template — instructions for what the CEO does on each heartbeat
  • Budget — monthly spend limit in cents
4

Build the org chart

From the CEO, create direct reports:
  • CTO managing engineering agents
  • CMO managing marketing agents
  • Other executives as needed
Each agent gets their own adapter config, role, and budget. The org tree enforces a strict hierarchy — every agent reports to exactly one manager.
5

Set budgets

Set monthly budgets at both the company and per-agent level.
6

Launch

Enable heartbeats for your agents and they’ll start working. Monitor progress from the dashboard.
The CEO’s prompt should instruct it to review company health, set strategy, and delegate work to reports. A well-written CEO prompt is the foundation of effective delegation.

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Budget Enforcement

DarkDuck enforces budgets automatically:
ThresholdAction
80%Soft alert — agent focuses on critical tasks only
100%Hard stop — agent is auto-paused
Set conservative budgets initially and increase as you see results.

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Company Templates

You can also create a company by importing a pre-built template: 
darkduck company import org/company-templates/engineering-team \
  --target new \
  --new-company-name "My Engineering Team"
See Importing & Exporting for details.
Start small. A CEO with 2-3 direct reports is enough to validate your company configuration before scaling to larger org charts.