Core concepts

Two parts: assistant + gateway

GoWork is a local AI workbench with two layers that work together:

• The model gateway is the foundation — one local endpoint that fronts your models and coding CLIs, handling protocol translation, account pooling, key management, model mapping, and usage tracking.
• The assistant sits on top — an agent that actually does work: it reasons, uses tools, remembers, automates, and delegates.

One line: the gateway moves the traffic; the assistant gets the job done.

Local by default

Everything runs on your machine. The local service listens on 127.0.0.1:8081, and all state — credentials, accounts, memory, records — lives under ~/.gowork. Cloud is never required.

The assistant is a reason–act agent

The assistant doesn't just answer; it works in a loop — think, call a tool, read the result, repeat — until a task is done or it needs your confirmation. It can act directly (files, shell, web, images) or delegate coding to Codex and Claude Code. See Assistant capabilities.

Safe by design

Because the assistant can touch real files and run real commands, every tool call passes a default-deny policy: read-only actions pass, risky ones need confirmation, unknown tools are refused. Delegated runtimes ask for approval, and you can remember "always allow" per session. Nothing leaves your machine unless you send it.

Reaches you where you are

The assistant runs in the background and can come to you over IM — DingTalk, Feishu, Telegram (WeChat is experimental) — so tasks keep going whether or not a window is open. See Channels.