How MacroCaptain works

You set the destination and the budget. MacroCaptain plots the course across your agents, tools and people, brings you the calls that are yours to make, and accounts for every cent.

MacroCaptain turns a goal into a plan. It breaks the goal into tasks, picks an agent for each one from the crew, works out the order and the critical path, and prices every step. You see the whole plan before anything happens.

Nothing spends money, publishes or sends anything until you approve it. When you approve a plan, MacroAssembly carries out the steps and reports each one back. MacroCaptain keeps the record: who decided what, what each step cost, and how the run ended.

MacroCaptain is invite-only for now. You sign in with Google, and the address has to be on the access list. If it isn't, the sign-in page says so.

The first time you sign in, MacroCaptain asks which company you're running. Then it's worth filling in the Brain, adding a planner key in Settings (see Costs and billing), and planning your first goal. Connecting agents can wait until a plan needs one; the plan tells you which.

Everything in MacroCaptain belongs to a company: its Brain, goals, runs, spend and agent keys. You can belong to more than one company and switch between them from the menu at the top left. Each company keeps its own records.

The Brain is what MacroCaptain knows about the company, and every plan starts from it. The more specific it is, the less you need to say in each goal, and the fewer plans you'll send back. It has these fields: Company, Website, What we sell, Ideal customer, Brand voice, Current goals, Activation event, Site repository, Notes.

The website is what the check-up reads. The activation event is the one action that means a new user got value; the check-up measures it. The site repository is the GitHub repository MacroDeploy may change for you.

Describe the outcome in plain words, for example “Launch the October webinar and fill it with 200 qualified sign-ups.” You can also set a spend ceiling in dollars and say what done means. Planning takes 20 to 60 seconds.

The plan shows every step with its agent, estimated cost and time window, and marks the steps on the critical path: the ones that set the finish time. It also shows the total estimate, what the same work would cost at scale, and anything that breaks your ceiling.

A plan waits for a decision, and the bell at the top of the app lists the plans that are waiting. Only an owner or admin can decide. There are three choices:

• Approve and start. The run begins. If a step uses an agent that needs a key, the key has to be connected first.
• Revise with a note. MacroCaptain plans again with what you said and links the new plan to the old one.
• Reject. The plan is closed.

Revising and rejecting need a reason of at least 8 characters. Those reasons are how MacroCaptain learns what you want, so plans get closer over time.

Runs lists every plan and run with its estimate, what it has spent, and its status: planned (waiting for a decision), running, completed, failed or cancelled. A rejected or revised plan shows as cancelled. Each run keeps a decision log of every plan, verdict and step, with who did it and when.

The check-up shows where the company stands on acquisition, activation, retention, referral and revenue, plus the foundations the agents work from. Every line shows what it is based on and is marked ok, a gap, or unseen. Unseen means the check-up couldn't look, never that something is missing; the line tells you what to connect to see it.

The first check-up reads only public pages and takes a few seconds. Connecting Macro agents lets it read what they know (see Connecting). Once you have run one by hand, MacroCaptain repeats it every week.

Each gap comes with a playbook. Some are tasks for you, with the steps written out. Others are goals MacroCaptain can plan, such as a four-week posting campaign, and site fixes can be sent to MacroDeploy as a pull request. The next check-up shows whether the playbook moved the line.

These are the agents MacroCaptain can put in a plan. The prices are the estimates the planner uses; a plan shows the full estimate before you approve it. This table is read from the same catalog the planner uses.

There are two kinds of connection, and they live in different places.

Macro agents are connected in MacroCaptain. An agent that works inside your own account with it, such as MacroMkt or MacroDeploy, needs an API key from that product. The key belongs to the company, not to you: an owner or admin adds it once in Settings, and it's used for every approved run. MacroAssembly fetches it for each approved step and calls the agent directly.

The check-up can also read some Macro products with a read-only key, added on the Check-up page:

• MacroMkt. In MacroMkt: Settings → API Tokens → New token. The check-up needs credentials:read and posts:read; campaigns also need content:write.
• MacroPrimer. In MacroPrimer: Settings → API keys → New key, with knowledge:read and workspace:read.
• MacroReply. In MacroReply: Settings → Developers → New API key.
• MacroSession. In MacroSession: Settings → Keys → secret key. The check-up only reads activation and retention counts with it; name the activation event in the Brain.

Outside tools are connected in MacroLinker. HubSpot, Gmail, Slack, LinkedIn and the like are connected once in MacroLinker, which holds those logins and handles retries, rate limits and the audit log. MacroCaptain keeps one MacroLinker token, added in Settings, and sends every outside call through it. You only need it once a run has to publish or send something through an outside tool. When you issue the token in MacroLinker, choose “Used by: MacroCaptain”. MacroCaptain signs every call it sends, and that token refuses anything unsigned, so it's useless on its own if it ever leaks.

Some agents need both. MacroPipe is a Macro agent, and it also needs HubSpot connected in MacroLinker. The crew table above says what each agent needs.

Macro products link accounts by email. Your account in MacroCaptain and your account in, say, MacroMkt are treated as the same person when they use the same verified email address.

If you use a different email in another Macro product, create an account there with the same email you use in MacroCaptain, then contact support and ask whether your data can be moved to it. Accounts with different emails are never linked automatically.

Planning runs on your own AI key: an Anthropic or DeepInfra API key added in Settings. When both are set, DeepInfra is used. Usage is billed to that account by the provider. A Claude Pro, Max or Claude Code subscription is not an API key and can't be used.

Agents are priced as in the crew table. Every plan shows its estimate against the ceiling you set and says plainly when it goes over, before you approve anything. A Macro product you already use keeps its own plan, paid to that product directly. Links between Macro products are free on every plan.

API keys and tokens are stored encrypted. After you save one, only its last four characters are ever shown again. An agent's key is handed over only for a step you approved, and only to that agent.

Sign-in is by Google, with sessions held on the server for 30 days. MacroCaptain keeps your name, email and avatar from Google. For support, MacroCaptain staff can open a company read-only: they can't plan, approve, spend or edit anything there, and every such view is logged.

These are designed and on the way. None of them is live yet.

• One-click Connect. A Connect button for each Macro agent, so nobody copies and pastes keys. If you already have an account in that product, you approve the link; if you don't, MacroCaptain opens one for you with the same email.
• A single set-up page that takes a new company from sign-in to its first plan without visiting other sites.
• One MacroLinker connection per company, set once by an admin, instead of one per person.
• Paying through MacroCaptain. A product account that MacroCaptain opens for you is billed on your MacroCaptain bill at that product's list price, with discounts for using several products together. Accounts you already pay for directly stay as they are.