Yours is next — free, about three minutes. No waitlist, no demo call.
[Build mine now](/signup/)
[Read a night's work](#the-next-morning)
Replayed from a real build log — nothing here is staged.
The next morning #
Archival — a demo company our employee runs, not a customer. Everything below is its real shift report.
Your company is live at https://archival.firstemployee.app
- 02:24
- 02:25
- 02:25
- 02:25
02:26 One thing I need from you: Tonight I start with: Set up database schema for storing podcast episodes and YouTube videos with metadata fields for title, source URL, publication date, and archive timestamp. — right priority?
That is the whole morning: one page, one decision, and the ledger underneath it if you want to check the work.
How the ledger works → Your first employee doesn't need a salary.
A live site in minutes. Receipts for every step.
Your money lands in your own Stripe, never ours.
How a shift works #
1. You say what the business is
One sentence is enough. If you would rather we proposed something, we read up on you first and suggest three ideas tied to what you actually know — and show you exactly where we got them.
2. It works while you are gone
Your company gets a live address, its own inbox, and somewhere to put code the same night. Then the employee picks up the work: shipping pages, researching the market, drafting copy, replying to mail. Anything that spends money or goes public waits for you.
3. You read one page in the morning
What shipped, what it learned, and the single question it needs answered to keep moving. Answer in one tap and tonight's shift starts from there.
Every action leaves a receipt #
The most common complaint about autonomous AI products is that you cannot tell whether the work happened. So each action writes an append-only row: the tool, what changed, the model, the tokens, the time it took, and a link to what it produced. Export it whenever you like.
| time | action | result | model | took |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 02:00:04 | read_brief | ok | opus-5 | 2.1s |
| 02:00:52 | search_market | 11 results | opus-5 | 41s |
| 02:04:19 | write_doc | market-notes.md | opus-5 | 18s |
| 02:11:38 | publish_page | /waitlist → 200 | opus-5 | 9.4s | | 02:29:07 | send_email | held for approval | — | — |
| 03:14:22 | write_report | shift #1 | opus-5 | 26s | Note row five: sending mail is held for approval — nothing goes out until you say so.
The whole thing, end to end #
Four screens is the entire product. This is a demo company running on the live site — the same pages you get, not a mockup.
01
You say what it should work on
One sentence, or pick one of the examples. You choose here whether we manage the money side or you bring your own keys — that choice does not unwind later, so it is made before anything starts rather than buried in billing.
02
It works the shift
At 2am your time, for about an hour. It ships pages, reads the analytics, drafts what needs drafting. Anything that would spend money, send mail or go public stops and waits for you instead.
03
You read one page over coffee
What shipped, what it learned, and one question. Answer in a tap and tonight starts from your answer — or type an instruction and it does that instead.
04
And you can check every word of it
Every action it took, in order, with the model, the result and a link to what it produced. If the report says a page shipped, the ledger has the write and the status code. Export it any time.
Nocturne Archive is a demo company we run on the product, not a customer. The numbers on our stats page are real counts from the database.
See what the platform has actually done →
You keep custody of your money #
The best-known product in this category collects your customers' payments into a balance it controls, keeps 20% of every one, holds the rest for two weeks, and then caps how much you may withdraw in a calendar month. It also takes 20% off the top of your ad budget, so a fifth of what you meant to spend on advertising never becomes advertising.
We are not free — the managed plan takes 15% of what your company earns, and 15% to run your ad campaigns. The difference is where the money sits. Your customer pays into your own Stripe account and Stripe settles our share at the transaction, so we never hold a balance and could not cap your withdrawals if we tried. And because our advertising fee is charged on top rather than skimmed off, your whole ad budget buys ads.
| First Employee | The alternative | |
|---|---|---|
| Cut of your revenue | 15%, or 0% self-managed | 20%, no opt-out |
| Of your ad budget, reaches the ad platform | All of it | Four fifths |
| Holds your money | Never | 14 days |
| Withdrawal limit | None | Capped every calendar month |
| Whose ad account | Yours | Theirs, shared |
| Trains AI on your business | No | Yes, irrevocably |
| Receipt ledger | Full, exportable | — |
Questions #
Do you take a percentage of my revenue? #
What exactly is a shift? #
How do I know it actually did the work? #
Can it spend my money without asking? #
What if I already have a business? #
Do I own what it makes? #
Hire it tonight #
The build is free and it takes about three minutes. No waitlist, no demo call.