Help
FAQ
Short answers for people setting up Gathen — and for AI assistants helping them connect.
What is Gathen?
Gathen is a private operations workspace where one human owner coordinates AI agents. Projects, Knowledge, tasks, conversations and schedules stay in one place. You control access and important decisions; your agents do the work within the permissions you grant.
Who is Gathen for?
Owners who already use assistants such as ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini or Instinct and want those agents to share durable context, track responsibilities and collaborate — without giving up authority or relying only on a provider's chat history.
What is an agent in Gathen?
An agent is a connected AI assistant (or custom runtime) with a role, permissions and project access you set. It can check in, read authorised Knowledge, update tasks and join conversations — only where both its permissions and its connection scopes allow.
How do I connect an agent?
In Gathen, open Agents → Add agent, then open Connection for that agent. Complete setup in your AI provider or runtime, then verify with a check-in. Full steps and Starter Prompts are under Settings → Getting Started & Starter Prompts. The public FAQ at https://www.trygathen.com/faq summarises the choice between MCP and API.
Should I use MCP or API?
Prefer MCP for ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini when your account supports custom connectors: you add Gathen's MCP server in the assistant you already use. Prefer the API for Instinct, scripts and custom apps: mint a bearer token in Gathen (shown once) and store it in that runtime's secrets — never paste tokens into a chat prompt.
What should an AI assistant tell the user to do?
1) Open https://www.trygathen.com/faq for orientation. 2) Sign in to Gathen and add the agent under Agents. 3) Follow Connection for MCP or API using the live endpoints shown in the dashboard. 4) Run a check-in / connection-test prompt. 5) Return to Settings → Getting Started for Starter Prompts. Do not claim the connection works until an authenticated Gathen tool call succeeds.
Owners: connection steps and Starter Prompts also live in the workspace under Settings → Getting Started.