01 / 11
Workbench (codename)
Pitch · Pre-Seed · May 2026
v0.1 · open source · AGPL-3.0 + commercial

The CRM
where your agents
do the work.

Set goals. Approve exceptions.
The rest runs.

Open-source, AI-native CRM for outreach. Self-host the daemon, invite your team, and let agents discover, draft, send, track, and pay people out under policies you write.

Necmettin Karakaya
necmttn@workbench.dev · workbench.dev
Workbench codename - final brand TBD
Workbench (codename)
02 / 11 · Team

02Team - Single Founder, Real Track Record

Shipped enterprise AI systems
for Fortune 100. Now solo
and faster for it.

Necmettin Karakaya
@necmttn - founder, engineer
  • $130K+ ACV closed solo at Context with QuEra (NVIDIA / DARPA / Google-backed quantum). Direct enterprise validation.
  • Former Tech Lead at Figment - crypto unicorn, infra at scale.
  • Built temporal-graph AI pre-ChatGPT at ailifestory.com.
  • Shipped mission-critical systems for 3M, Koch Industries, ASU.
Distributed team of senior collaborators. First two senior engineering hires lined up to close on design-partner signal.

One operator with a decade of enterprise AI shipping, $130K in solo-closed ACV, and a network of senior engineers staged to join the moment the design-partner signal lands.

The bottleneck isn't headcount. It's conviction and shipping speed. Both are already moving.

Shipped at · trusted by
workbench.dev
Workbench (codename)
03 / 11 · Problem

03Problem

Outreach is broken. AI agents are not the answer alone -
they're the engine. The chassis is missing.

  • Sales/marketing teams pay $50–500/seat/month for Salesforce, HubSpot, Attio - and still hire SDR agencies on top.
  • The new wave of "AI SDRs" - 11x, Artisan, Regie.ai, Lindy - are closed-source black boxes. No provenance, no audit trail, no data ownership.
  • Clay's $1B valuation proves GTM engineers want a hackable substrate. But Clay isn't open source either.
  • DTC ops + creator-economy agencies wire together 5–7 disconnected tools (Apollo, Smartlead, Aspire, Grin, Triple Whale) and still have no system of record.
  • The system of record for the AI era doesn't exist yet - it has to be open, agent-first, and own its own data.
tools/seat/mo (sample) ·Salesforce ·HubSpot Apollo.io ·Attio Smartlead Clay ($1B) Triple Whale 11x - closed Artisan - closed Regie.ai - closed Aspire Grin Lindy Deepline - closed + Stripe + Slack + Notion
workbench.dev
Workbench (codename)
04 / 11 · Solution

04Solution

One open-source CRM. Goals in,
agents out, you in command.

Self-host the daemon. Invite your team. Set goals. AI agents discover, draft, send, track, and pay people out under policies you write. You drain an approval inbox - the only place where work needs you.

Every prompt, every tool call, every record-touch is captured as a first-class artifact you can inspect, fork, or override.

AGPL-3.0 + commercial license. Same playbook as PostHog and Cal.com:
source-available, self-hostable, monetized via hosted + managed services.
01 ● goal "30 outbound conversations / wk · DTC"
↓
02 ◆ plan decomposed by planner agent
↓
03 ▣ tool_calls apollo · smartlead · clay-style enrich
↓
04 ◰ records contacts · drafts · sequences
↓
05 ★ approval human-in-the-loop (you)
↓
06 ✓ outcome sent · paid · replied · memory updated
workbench.dev
Workbench (codename)
05 / 11 · Product

05Product - The Hackable Heart

Three plugin paths. One catalog.
Everything you can audit.

01 · Code

TypeScript

Drop a file into plugins/. View, action, schema - typed end-to-end.

defineView({ id: "creators.kanban", layout: "sidebar+grid", grid: { groupBy: "stage", columns: [ "outreach", "negotiating", "contracted" ] } })
02 · JSON

Catalog

Same view, emittable by any agent. Storage-conformant, registry-installable, sandboxed.

// catalog/creators.kanban.json { "$schema": "workbench/v1", "id": "creators.kanban", "layout": "sidebar+grid", "emittedBy": "agent:view-composer", "approvedBy": "@necmttn", "signedHash": "sha256:9f3a…" }
03 · Prompt

⌘K composer

Plain English. The view-composer agent emits a catalog entry that renders live and survives reloads.

⌘K › kanban of creators by outreach stage with payout totals → composing view… → schema OK → awaiting approval ✓ rendered · catalog/3f3a
approval · agent:writer-01 · sequence:dtc-may · cost $0.04
send 3 outbound emails drafted for "creator-DTC may batch" - 92 lines, 0 flagged claims, 1 policy soft-pass.
memory · since 2026-05-01 · creator-DTC framing converted 18% better when payout terms came in line 2, not line 4.

Every prompt, tool call, and decision is yours to inspect, fork, or override. · live at demo.html

workbench.dev
Workbench (codename)
06 / 11 · Traction

06Traction

Architecture locked.
First demo partners landing in 30 days.

What we have today

  • Full architecture spec + Phase-A implementation plan committed - ≥10 weeks of design decisions documented.
  • Three working prototypes live: schema-evolution, AI-orchestration, demo flow.
  • OSS stack chosen and dependency-validated: Pi, executor.sh, json-render, Zoneless - all MIT/Apache, embeddable.
  • Landing page + animated demo shipped this week - the artifacts in front of you.
  • License decided: AGPL-3.0 + commercial (PostHog / Cal.com pattern).
Prior validation: $130K ACV closed solo at Context (quantum/enterprise).
Same execution muscle applied to a bigger market.
30 days
to first design-partner installs
5 partners
creator-economy agencies, self-hosted
⌘K → payout
v1 demo flow target · end-to-end
workbench.dev
Workbench (codename)
07 / 11 · GTM

07Go-to-Market

First vertical: B2C creator economy.
Architecture extends to B2B.

Phase 1

Design partners

months 1–6
  • 5 creator-marketing agencies (DTC-adjacent)
  • Self-hosted, white-glove onboarding
  • Free in exchange for weekly product input
Target - 3 publish their workflow as a case study
Phase 2

OSS launch + hosted beta

months 6–18
  • Public GitHub · Show HN · /r/selfhosted launch
  • Hosted cloud variant for non-technical teams
  • $50–500/seat/mo + managed API proxy
Target - 30–50 active installs · 10–20 paying agencies
Phase 3

B2B vertical

months 18+
  • Architecture already supports B2B sales
  • Apollo / Crustdata / PDL / Smartlead plugins ship
  • Enterprise self-host + on-prem support
Target - 100+ installs · $1M+ ARR

OSS distribution + creator-economy beachhead + B2B expansion. PostHog ran this play. Cal.com ran this play. The substrate compounds.

workbench.dev
Workbench (codename)
08 / 11 · Competition

08Competition

The missing open quadrant.

Closed Open Hackable / agent-native Generic / one-size-fits-all source-availability → agent-nativeness →
Closed · hackable-ish Clay · Attio · 11x · Artisan · Deepline
Open · agent-native
Workbench us · alone in this quadrant
Closed · generic HubSpot · Salesforce
Open · generic Twenty · SuiteCRM · EspoCRM

Closed AI SDRs (11x, Artisan, Regie.ai) replace humans with black boxes you can't audit.

Open CRMs (Twenty, SuiteCRM) lack an agent runtime.

Clay charges per seat with no source access. Deepline solved the data layer - we plug it in.

Workbench is the missing open quadrant.

workbench.dev
Workbench (codename)
09 / 11 · Vision

09Vision

The system of record
for the AI era.

Today, every team rebuilds outreach automation in 5 tools and watches the data scatter.

Tomorrow, the runtime is open, the data is yours, and your agents inherit a memory that compounds with every approval you make.

records agents decisions outcomes approvals memory YOU
workbench.dev
Workbench (codename)
10 / 11 · The Ask

10The Ask

$500K pre-seed.

Business
First 5 design partners - DTC agencies + creator-economy ops, white-glove onboarded.
Team
First two senior hires - engineering (storage + plugin SDK) + design-partner success.
Product
Ship Phase A → Phase D - foundations through payouts + B2C plugin pack, within 6 months.
5 design partners
OSS GitHub launch
$50K hosted MRR
6 months
Seed-ready · OSS-channel-validated
workbench.dev
Workbench (codename)

You set the goals.
Your agents do the work.

Necmettin Karakaya
necmttn@workbench.dev
workbench.dev · open source · AGPL-3.0 + commercial