Gridtop Beta Manual

The complete guide to Gridtop, the agent workspace that runs on your own hosting, and to Autocomputing ’26, its app for Windows: what each part of the screen does, how to direct AI agents safely, how to build and manage websites, and what everything costs.

Part I: Getting Started

Part II: Gridtop's Surface

Part III: Agents

Part IV: Automation and Cost

Part V: Files and Storage

Part VI: Websites and Hosting

Part VII: System

Part VIII: Autocomputing '26 for Windows

Part IX: Reference

About This Manual

A Word from Us

We at Autocomputing thank you for choosing Gridtop, and we welcome you to it.

We built Gridtop for people who run a business or a website, and who would rather direct the work than manage its mechanics. We see computers, and the agents that now live on them, as tools; and a tool is judged both by how well it performs and by how it treats the person holding it. Gridtop brings your website, your files, your hosting and a team of AI agents together in one gridform, where you direct agents and agentic processes visually, with objects, and put the work to them to carry out on your behalf.

This manual is written to serve you after the sale as carefully as we hoped to serve you before it. It begins with a short tour and a first lesson, so that you are working within the hour. It then takes each part of Gridtop in turn: the grid, your agents and how to direct them, your files, your websites and hosting, and the Windows app, Autocomputing '26. Each chapter explains what a thing is and why it is there before it tells you how to use it, and the reference chapters at the back gather what you will want to look up again.

This is a beta release, and we say so plainly. Gridtop is complete enough to do real work every day, and it is still being built. Parts of it will change, some in ways we have already planned, and some because you have told us what you need. We are responsible for describing Gridtop to you honestly, for keeping it working as this manual describes, and for telling you when something changes. When something does not behave as described here, choose Support from the header menu; your report comes straight to us, with the details we need to put it right.

Thank you for your trust in us. We will work to keep it.

Autocomputing

Our Responsibilities and Yours

Your agreements with us set out what each of us undertakes. This page restates the parts you are most likely to need, in plain words, with the section each comes from. It adds nothing to the agreements and takes nothing away; where they differ from this page, the agreements govern.

What we undertake

• To provide the hosting your plan describes, and not to reduce its resources during a term you have paid for. (Hosting Service Agreement §1.)
• To tell you at least 30 days before a price increase applies to you, and 30 days before any significant change to our services or terms. (Hosting Service Agreement §2–3, §13; Gridtop Service Terms §13; Terms & Conditions §13.)
• To tell you if a renewal payment fails, and to try again before anything is suspended. (Hosting Service Agreement §5.)
• To use commercially reasonable efforts to keep the services available, and to schedule maintenance for quiet hours where we can. (Hosting Service Agreement §11.)
• To let you cancel Gridtop yourself, with Gridtop staying on to the end of the term you have paid for. (Gridtop Service Terms §3.)
• To keep restore points before the changes Gridtop makes to your websites, for a limited time. (Gridtop Service Terms §6.)
• To answer your reports, by email and in the Logs app. (Gridtop Service Terms §10.)
• To keep your files available to download for 30 days after the Gridtop add-on ends, and to bring your Gridtop back as it was if you start it again in that time. (Gridtop Service Terms §12.)
• To deliver updates to the Windows app that are signed and checked, and to return to the previous version if an update fails. (End User License Agreement §5.)
• Not to sell your Gridtop content or use it to train AI models, and to look at your content only when you ask us for support, when we must investigate abuse or a security problem, or when the law requires it. (Privacy Addendum §3.)

What you undertake

• To keep your account's details accurate, and your password and two-factor sign-in secure, and to tell us promptly of any use of your account you did not authorise. (Terms & Conditions §2.)
• To use the services lawfully, and within their acceptable-use rules; these apply to what your agents do and produce, too. (Terms & Conditions §3; Gridtop Service Terms §4.)
• To be responsible for your agents. What your agents do (writing files, changing websites, deploying code, running work on your computer) is done on your behalf. Review what matters before you rely on it or publish it. Permissions and limits help you control your agents; they do not guarantee what an agent will do. (Gridtop Service Terms §4.)
• To look after your own AI provider keys, and to abide by your providers' terms; what you send to a provider goes to that provider. (Gridtop Service Terms §5.)
• To take responsibility for what you ask the Windows app to do on your computer, including commands you run in its Bash tab and work your agents queue there. (End User License Agreement §6; Gridtop Service Terms §8.)
• To keep your own backups of anything you cannot afford to lose. Our restore points and server protection are a safety net, not a substitute. (Hosting Service Agreement §10; Gridtop Service Terms §6; End User License Agreement §6.)
• To register and renew your own domains. (Hosting Service Agreement §8.)
• To download anything you want to keep before a term ends. (Hosting Service Agreement §12.)

About This Manual

Who it is for. The owner or operator of an Autocomputing account: someone who runs a business or a website, is comfortable with a computer, and is new to working with AI agents. You do not need to be a programmer. Where a chapter touches something technical, such as DNS records or databases, it explains the idea before it asks you to act on it.

How it is organised. Part I gets you started. Parts II to VII each cover one area of Gridtop, and can be read in any order once you have finished Part I. Part VIII covers Autocomputing '26, the Windows app. Part IX is for reference. Sections are numbered by chapter (12.3 is the third section of chapter 12), and cross-references use those numbers.

Conventions.

• Words on the screen, such as the names of buttons, tabs, menu items and windows, are printed in bold, exactly as they appear.
• A path through menus is written with an arrow: APIs & Models ▸ LLM Integrations means open APIs & Models, then choose LLM Integrations.
• Keys are printed in capitals: CTRL+Z, ENTER, F8.
• To click is to press the left mouse button once; to double-click, twice quickly; to right-click, to press the right button, which on Gridtop usually opens a menu.
• Examples follow one small business, Landotronix, so that the pictures and the text agree from chapter to chapter.

Remove and Delete. These two words mean different things on Gridtop, and this manual keeps them strictly apart. Everything you see on the grid is a shortcut to a file. To Remove something takes the shortcut away and leaves the file where it is. To Delete something sends the file itself to the Receptaculum, from which it can be restored. Chapter 9 explains both.

Notices. Four kinds of notice are set apart from the text:

• Note: a point worth knowing that is easy to miss.
• Tip: a quicker or better way to do something.
• Important: something that affects your work or your account if it is overlooked.
• Caution: placed before a step that cannot be undone, that costs money, or that makes something public. Read it before you act.

Latin readouts. Some of Gridtop's short messages are in Latin, such as Revoca Motum when you undo a move; Latin keeps a message to a word or two. Each is translated in the Readouts Glossary, chapter 44.

Figures. Pictures are numbered Figure GT-001, GT-002 and so on, in the order they appear.

What's New in 1.0-beta

1.0-beta is the first edition of Gridtop to come with a manual. Since the public preview, it has gained:

• Autocomputing '26, the Windows app: your drive under a letter in Windows, two-way sync, models and media tools on your own computer, agent harnesses run from your PC, a Bash tab in the Terminal, and signed, automatic updates with rollback (Part VIII).
• Agentic Hosting, a hosting plan with Gridtop included (2.2).
• APIs & Models, one place to connect AI providers, with keys kept encrypted in your own hosting account so that agents keep working when you are away (chapter 13); and Effort, a chip that sets how hard a model thinks (13.7).
• Long replies that run on the server, and continue when you close the tab (12.12, 19.2).
• Schedules, for work your agents do on a timetable (chapter 20), and Budgeting, with limits per reply, per day and per Task (chapter 21).
• Index, a Details view of your drive and your websites' folders that behaves like a file manager (22.3), and file drops straight from your computer onto chats, folders and the grid (22.5).
• The Receptaculum for deleted files, with undoable deletes, and Destroy when you are sure (chapter 9).
• Template sites and the Web Editor: finished website templates, staged versions of your site, and an editor in which you annotate, rewrite, design and lay out a page, with an agent working beside you, before you deploy (chapters 26 and 27).
• Integrations and the Harness: MCP servers, Zapier, Obsidian, Salesforce, OpenClaw and Hermes, and email to your agents (chapter 32).
• Break Out: any Gridtop window in a window of its own (10.1).
• Command blocks, Recording and Replay, reports to us from inside Gridtop, and the Registry, describing every part of Gridtop (12.13, chapters 33 and 35).