Fundamentals

Understand the foundational concepts of Kognitos.

Overview

This guide covers the essential concepts you need to understand how Kognitos works. You'll learn core concepts, the automation lifecycle, and how Kognitos works.

Structure

Let's start with how your work is organized and structured in Kognitos. Three levels are used to organize your work: Organizations (your company), Workspaces (teams or projects), and Automations (individual workflows).

Organization

An organization is your company's account: the top-level container for everything in Kognitos. Every user belongs to one. Organizations allow you to manage members, billing, and settings in one place.

Workspace

A workspace is a dedicated section within an organization where one or more automation projects live. Think of them as folders that keep your work organized. You can create multiple workspaces within an organization to organize different processes, teams, or initiatives.

Automations

Automations are the individual tasks or processes you want to execute. Each automation lives in a workspace and represents a specific workflow, like "Validate Invoice" or "Send Payment Reminder". Every automation begins as a draft, allowing you to edit and test it before publishing.

Example Structure

Here's how this might look for a company like Acme Corp, with separate workspaces for Finance, Logistics, and HR teams — each containing their own automations.

The Automation Lifecycle

In Kognitos, automations move through three distinct phases:

1

1. Draft

Every automation begins as a draft, allowing you to build and refine your instructions through conversation with Kognitos. Drafts are editable workflows that evolve as you make changes.

2

2. Publish

When a draft is ready, you publish it to create an automation. An automation is the locked, production-ready version of a draft, designed for reliable and repeatable execution.

3

3. Monitor

After publishing, your automation is live and ready to run independently. You don’t need to do anything else, but you can monitor as needed — observe how your automation performs, check results, handle exceptions, and refine guidance.

This lifecycle is iterative. When changes are needed, you return to the draft, update the logic, publish, run, and monitor a new version.

Inputs & Outputs

Automations transform data. Understanding how data flows into and out of your automations is key to building workflows that connect your business processes.

Inputs

Inputs are the data your automation needs to run. Kognitos identifies inputs based on your task instructions. For example, if you write "validate each invoice in the uploaded spreadsheet," the system knows it needs a spreadsheet file as input. Inputs can be manual or automatic:

Manual

• Files (PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, CSVs)

• Text (letters, words, numbers, dates)

• References (invoice numbers, customer IDs, order codes)

Automatic (scheduled or event-triggered)

• New files uploaded to a folder

• Rows added to a spreadsheet

• Form submissions from your website

• API responses from external systems

Outputs

Outputs are what your automation produces — representing completed work and generated results. There are different types of outputs:

Data

• Updated spreadsheets with processed records

• Database entries created or modified

• Generated reports or summaries

Communication

• Emails sent to specific recipients

• Notifications triggered in other systems

• API calls made to external systems

Summary

Kognitos organizes your work into three levels: organizations (your company), workspaces (teams or projects), and automations (individual workflows). Automations follow a simple lifecycle: build as a draft, publish when ready, and evaluate results in production.

Ready to see it in action? Head to the Quick Start guide to create your first automation.