Getting Started

#Purpose

Welcome to Opal. This section has one job: to take you from a brand-new account to your first real piece of work running on the platform.

Opal is an agentic operations platform. It brings people, agents, knowledge, systems, and processes together into a single operational environment, so an organization can coordinate a workforce that is part human and part digital — and move from intention to execution faster as a result.

Getting Started is written for readers who are new to Opal. It assumes no prior knowledge of the platform and minimal technical background, and it explains each idea at the point you first need it. You direct agents in plain language, the same way you would brief a colleague, and you can review and refine their output at any point.

Work through it and you will know:

• what Opal is, who it is for, and the value it delivers;
• what the platform’s main areas are and how they fit together;
• how to set up and run your own first agent, knowledge, space, thread, task, and flow.

Four pages make up the section. Three are meant to be read in order. The fourth, the Glossary, is reference material to dip into whenever a term is unfamiliar.

#In This Section

• What Is Opal? — What Opal is, who it is for, the value it delivers, and the operating model behind it.
• Opal at a Glance — A high-level tour of the platform’s main areas — spaces, threads, tasks, and flows; knowledge; agents and their building blocks; templates; the Marketplace; organization and governance — and how they connect.
• Quickstart — Six hands-on walkthroughs, in order — your first agent, knowledge, space, thread, task, and flow — each ending in one working result you can build on.
• Glossary — Short definitions of key Opal terms, listed alphabetically for quick reference as you read.

#Key Concepts

These are the ideas Getting Started introduces. You do not need to learn them here — this page only shows you where each one is explained.

• Agentic operations — The practice of coordinating people, agents, knowledge, systems, and processes toward shared business objectives. It is the operating model Opal is built around, and the reason the platform is shaped the way it is. Explained in What Is Opal?
• A workforce that is part human, part digital — People remain responsible for leadership, judgment, creativity, and governance; agents, Opal’s digital workers, add capacity for analysis, coordination, and execution. Explained in What Is Opal?
• Where work happens, and the three ways it gets done — Work happens in a space, and it happens in three ways: live in a thread, on its own in a task, and step by step in a flow. Mapped in Opal at a Glance, then put into practice in Quickstart
• Knowledge as the shared source of truth — Opal’s centralized knowledge base gives people and agents the same organized, governed information to work from, rather than generic answers. Mapped in Opal at a Glance
• Reuse and oversight — Templates and the Marketplace let proven work be applied again instead of rebuilt, and governance keeps changes reviewable, traceable, and reversible. Mapped in Opal at a Glance

Key Opal terms are defined in one place: Glossary.

#Where to Start

Start with What Is Opal? Everything else in this section assumes it.

Then keep going in this order:

1. Get the map. Opal at a Glance tours the platform’s main areas and shows how they fit together.
2. Build something. Quickstart is the hands-on part of this section, taking you from a configured agent to a flow that carries a small process from start to finish.

Keep the Glossary to hand as you read. It is built for looking a term up, not for reading straight through.

When you have finished this section, there are two natural directions:

• Go deeper on any concept. Core Concepts covers every part of the platform in the depth Getting Started deliberately leaves out.
• Follow a real scenario end to end. Guides are outcome-based tutorials that show how the pieces combine to accomplish a complete piece of work.