Y Computer QM Edition · founding run of 25

Built on Y Combinator's open-source agent platform.

Y Combinator's software teamqmopen source · MIT · 12.2k starsQM Edition — the local-first build

QM is the multiplayer agent harness Y Combinator's software team built for its own company and released under MIT: one agent floor for a whole team, in Slack and on the web, with per-person isolated workspaces. Upstream, it deploys to a cloud account and calls metered model APIs. The QM Edition is the same core, rebuilt local-first — QM, Postgres and the models all living on one machine we assemble, burn in and benchmark.

See the machine Read the source

The QM web UI: two concurrent agent sessions with a sidebar of files, crons, keychain, deploys, memory and skills

QM's own web UI — unmodified, from the upstream repository

Same core. Opposite defaults.

Upstream QM is deliberately customizable: harness, session store, sandbox and memory all sit behind interfaces, swapped in via one wiring file. Our build swaps exactly one thing — where the intelligence runs.

As upstream ships it

Cloud-first

Deploys to Fly.io or AWS, in your own cloud account
Postgres provisioned in the cloud
Agents call metered frontier model APIs
Needs an infrastructure-comfortable platform engineer

As the QM Edition ships

Local-first

Runs on one machine in your office — no cloud account
Postgres on the box, on encrypted local storage
Agents run against local models through the Y OS API — no per-token charge
We are the platform engineer: installed, wired, benchmarked

How QM actually works.

Every turn runs through a central headless core; a small, fixed tool surface includes `execute`, which runs in each scope's own durable sandbox — installed tools stay installed. As documented upstream.

Plugins: Slack (Bolt) · web UI (Vite + Lit) · admin panel · public portal; Optional surfaces over the core's HTTP API
Headless core: API · identity · policy · scheduler · the agent loop; Every turn runs through here
Harnesses: Pi · OpenCode · Codex · Claude Code; Swappable — no vendor lock-in
Substrates: Harness, session store, sandbox and memory sit behind interfaces; Swap in via one wiring file — this is where our build differs
Persistence: Postgres — sessions, memory, queue · per-scope durable sandbox; On the box, on encrypted storage

Our customizations live where upstream says they should — in the deployment layer and wiring, with the core kept identical to upstream so every improvement Y Combinator's team ships merges straight in.

One agent floor for the whole company.

Per-person scoped memory, files, permissions, crons and sandboxes. Shared channels, projects and skills. One identity in Slack and on the web.

A quiet studio office with a single black tower computer on a sideboard

Search internal notes, email, documents, databases and the web together

Retrieve information from your company brain

Build internal apps and publish them to the right people

Learn your writing voice, then triage your inbox on a schedule

Work in an existing repository: run tests, open PRs, monitor CI

Track a project in a shared channel and post updates and follow-ups

Agents with a security posture.

The org picks one posture; narrower scopes can only tighten it. On the QM Edition, all of it is enforced on hardware you own.

Strict

Every harness tool call pauses for human approval, except the two no-effect turn enders.

Auto

The default. A classifier screens provenance-labelled external data and tool results before they reach the model.

Dangerous

No content screening, no pauses. Even here, the predeclared command policy still applies.

The predeclared command policy — approval rules and hard denials for things like recursive deletes and destructive SQL — applies in every posture, Dangerous included.

Y Computer QM Edition tower at dusk beside a monitor

Founding run · № 1–25

The machine

A Pro 64 with the agent floor pre-built.

Processor: AMD Ryzen Threadripper 9960X
AI memory: 256GB ECC system memory
Accelerator: 2× Radeon AI PRO R9700 · 64GB aggregate VRAM
Storage: 4TB NVMe
Installed: Y OS · QM · Postgres · pinned local models
Wired: Slack + web UI at install · your posture set with you

$11,999

complete system · QM configured · Y OS installation included · tax and shipping extra

QM is open source (MIT), released by Y Combinator's software team; the Y Combinator mark identifies the upstream project only. Y builds and supports this machine independently — not affiliated with or endorsed by Y Combinator.