Run your company on infrastructure you own.
ORCA is open-source organisational infrastructure for small teams — governed memory in Git, request-driven coordination with approvals, and AI-assisted operations through AVA in Slack. Not a SaaS platform. Not an AI workforce.
A company operating system you own.
Three pillars that work together — governed memory, visible requests, and AI-assisted coordination through functional systems.
Memory
Governed organisational artifacts in Git — the durable source of truth for decisions, policies, and context.
Requests
Work tracked with UIDs, status lifecycle, and approval policy. Visible, auditable, and human-accountable.
AVA
Coordination in Slack — capture, Q&A with citations, transcript ingestion, daily briefings, L2 proposals, and focus protection.
Deliberate boundaries.
The full daily loop.
From Slack capture to meeting ingestion to your morning briefing — every step lands in governed Git memory.
Capture
Govern
Ingest
Drop a meeting transcript. AVA extracts governed captures and routes decision candidates to the proposal inbox — the raw file never becomes canonical memory.
Start the day
Priorities: Xero integration, pricing policy approved. Open actions: 3 from standup. Full artifact: ava/briefings/daily/2026-06-21.md
Small teams have too much to hold in their heads.
Decisions get lost.
Risks drift.
Actions disappear into chat.
Customer notes are scattered.
Meeting outcomes are forgotten.
AI tools give answers, but company context does not survive.
As teams add AI, the problem gets worse unless memory, approvals and accountability are designed from the start.
From Slack to durable company memory.
Operators work in Slack. AVA routes capture, Q&A, and proposals. The workflow engine tracks requests and approvals. Everything durable lands in Git — semantic search via Qdrant is rebuildable and subordinate to Git.
secrets.env.example
→
secrets.env (chmod 600)
→
secrets.backend: local
→
loaded at runtime
- Schema validation
- Policy enforcement
- Provenance tracking
- Audit events
- UID & status lifecycle
- Approval policy
- Semantic search
- Git wins on conflict
secrets.env file (chmod 600, gitignored). Validate with orca secrets validate — slot names only, never values. Nothing sensitive in Git.
Install walkthrough →
Proportional approvals.
Automation expands only where traceability and approval policy exist.
Generated outputs
Automatic
Daily briefings, meeting summaries
Operational memory
Automatic capture
Customer notes, actions, dismissals
Governance memory
Explicit operator approval
Decisions, policies, commitments
What ORCA is built from.
Functional systems, not employees. Each is open, configurable and inspectable.
Git Memory
Version-controlled organisational artifacts; source of truth for all durable knowledge.
Memory Write Gateway
Schema validation, policy enforcement, provenance tracking, commit, and audit events.
Request Engine
UID, status lifecycle, assignees, and approval policy tracked in PostgreSQL.
AVA
Coordination: capture, Q&A with citations, transcript ingestion, daily briefings, L2 proposals, and focus protection.
Slack Interface
Operator and approvals channels with Block Kit — the MVP operator surface.
Qdrant Search
Semantic retrieval over company memory. Git wins on conflict.
Also shipped: model registry, local secrets backend (optional 1Password). On the roadmap: web control plane, specialist systems (SEC, FIN, PMO), MCP and additional adapters.
Built to be understood. Made to be moved.
ORCA is not just open-source in licence. The design philosophy is open: inspectable systems, configurable models, readable memory and infrastructure your company controls.
View on GitHubMVP complete. Honest boundaries.
Product MVP shipped June 2026 · Epics 1–7
Shipped in MVP
- CLI: install, instance create, upgrade, doctor, backup
- Git memory with governance gateway and audit
- Workflow engine with approvals in Slack
- AVA: capture, Q&A with citations, L2 proposals, focus protection, voice guardrails
- Qdrant semantic search with Git authority
- Model registry and local secrets file (
secrets.env) - Transcript ingestion — drop zone, L1 extraction, L2 proposal candidates
- Daily briefings — scheduled L0 generation and Slack delivery
On the roadmap
- Web control plane
- Additional ORCA Systems (SEC, FIN, PMO, …)
- MCP and additional adapters
- Dedicated documentation site
MVP scope: Slack is the operator interface. One organisation per instance. AVA is the only active system.
Ready to run the full loop?
ORCA MVP is complete and open source. Install it, connect Slack, drop a transcript, and start tomorrow with a governed briefing.
Questions or feedback?
Email us at hello@orcateam.org