---
title: AI Team, Agent Studio, and Agent Harness
description: Understand Teloa's three product layers and the boundaries between employees, capabilities, and execution engines.
lastVerified: 2026-10-18
---

# 2.1 AI Team, Agent Studio, and Agent Harness

**Teloa · AI-Native Team Studio. An AI team of your own. For everyone.**

Teloa is an AI-Native Team Studio for building, managing, and running teams of AI employees. You set goals, grant access, and review results; employees collaborate on deliverables within those boundaries. Roles, knowledge, skills, tools, memory, and permissions define lasting jobs. Start with the work you need done and build the team as needed.

## 1. Three product layers

**TELOA = AI Team + Agent Studio + Agent Harness**

| Product layer | Purpose | Core concepts |
| --- | --- | --- |
| 01 · AI Team | Build and run your AI team | Employees, tasks, collaboration, business areas, projects, automation |
| 02 · Agent Studio | Define how each AI employee works | Roles, knowledge, skills, tools / MCP, memory, permissions |
| 03 · Agent Harness | Support safe, continuous, controlled execution | Model, Environment, Tool Gateway, Sandbox, Approval, Observability |

**Team is the product, Agent is the unit of work, and Agent Harness is the foundation that runs the work.** These product layers do not require three new pages or services. See [Source architecture](https://docs.teloa.ai/v/0.2.0/markdown/en/develop/architecture.md) for the implementation view.

### 1.1 AI Team: employees and delivery

You need to know who your employees are, what they are doing, what needs you, and whether the work meets your expectations. Business areas organize ongoing work; projects connect tasks, employees, work groups, and results around a delivery goal. Tasks and automations manage one-off and recurring work.

AI Team means your lasting business team. A task team is temporary delegation within a task, started by a conversation or employee. Task assistants do not automatically become employees. See [People and collaboration](https://docs.teloa.ai/v/0.2.0/markdown/en/concepts/people.md).

### 1.2 Agent Studio: six working elements

| Configuration | Question |
| --- | --- |
| Role | Who are you, and what are you responsible for? |
| Knowledge | What should you know, and which references may you use? |
| Skill | How do you work, and which methods can you reuse? |
| Tools / MCP | Which business systems and tools can you use? |
| Memory | Which role experience and feedback has sources and should be retained, reused, or withdrawn? |
| Permissions | How far may you act, and when is a person needed? |

These elements define a lasting employee together; they do not require six configuration pages. Memory comes from work and feedback with sources. See [Automatic memory](https://docs.teloa.ai/v/0.2.0/markdown/en/concepts/memory.md) for usage and management boundaries.

MCP is one protocol for connecting external capabilities. Configuring a tool does not authorize every action. Skills provide established methods while leaving employees able to plan within their permissions.

### 1.3 Agent Harness: reliable execution

Agent Harness is the agent engine: it calls models, provides the execution environment, and handles tool calls, sandbox isolation, approvals, and execution visibility. Teloa uses native engine capabilities first and adapts employee identity, business scope, and delivery rules. DSH is the current engine. Support for other engines, enterprise security gateways, and distributed deployment is described in [Editions](https://docs.teloa.ai/v/0.2.0/markdown/en/reference/editions.md).

### 1.4 From setup to autonomous work

1. Recruit employees and define their responsibilities.
2. Add knowledge, business references, and context.
3. Teach skills so established methods can be reused.
4. Connect tools or MCP services to real business systems.
5. Set permissions, including read, write, and approval boundaries.
6. Start work through tasks, supported events, or schedules while the environment is online.
7. Bring key decisions back to a person: approvals, exceptions, high-risk actions, and delivery review.

Start with an employee template or AI team template; you do not need to repeat setup for every task. Autonomous work remains subject to permissions, supported triggers, and whether the environment is available.

## 2. Skills, connections, and extension packages

A skill describes how to work. A connection provides external information or tools. A task template supplies reusable task inputs, goals, and delivery requirements. Templates can reference skills, and a skill can serve different tasks.

An extension package is a unit of installation and distribution. It can provide multiple skills, connections, or execution capabilities. These are contents provided by a package. A capability should identify its source package; package management should explain what it provides and which business areas use it.

“Official” and “third-party” describe the publisher. “Built-in” and “user-installed” describe delivery. Neither distinction alone determines whether an item can be disabled or removed. Required system components and optional extensions need different treatment.

## 3. What an AI team template contains

An AI team template can combine seven kinds of content: AI employees, skills, reference knowledge, connections, business boards, task templates, and required apps. It supplies business configuration, rather than representing a single engine extension.

For example, a marketing team template might define content employees, writing skills, product information, a data connection, and a weekly report template. After adding it, check the content, connections, and employee permissions separately. Adding the template does not make all its dependencies ready. See [Business resource packages](https://docs.teloa.ai/v/0.2.0/markdown/en/develop/packages.md) to create one.

## 4. Installed does not mean available or authorized

| Fact to check | Meaning |
| --- | --- |
| Installation | Content is installed in the relevant environment |
| Enablement | A loading or enablement choice has been saved |
| Running | The component has actually loaded, or has an error or requires a restart |
| Connection and authentication | The external service, keys and authorizations are usable |
| Business authorization | A particular employee may perform particular operations within a defined scope |

These are independent dimensions, not a mandatory five-step sequence. A skill may need no authentication. An enabled extension that fails to load remains unavailable. A working connection does not grant every employee permission to publish, change, or delete information.

For a weekly marketing report, the task template defines inputs and delivery requirements, skills provide the analysis method, connections supply data, and the employee acts within its permissions. The engine records execution. The task requirements determine whether the result is accepted.

## 5. Where to manage things

Marketplace supports discovery and selection. The Apps page (My apps) and business or employee configuration manage existing resources. Connections and environment in Settings directly contains native extension management and run configuration. Component status is for dependencies. Installation, enablement, running state, and business authorization are checked separately.

Settings reuses the official management interface and save operations. Teloa manages business authorization separately. See the [capabilities guide](https://docs.teloa.ai/v/0.2.0/markdown/en/guides/capabilities.md) and [Capability and engine integration boundaries](https://docs.teloa.ai/v/0.2.0/markdown/en/develop/engine-integration.md).