AQ for startups
Updated August 4, 2026 · first published July 28, 2026 · by the AQ team
AQ lets a startup ship like a team several times its size: run Claude Code, Codex, and other agent CLIs in parallel workspaces on one always-on machine, see everything the agents are doing in one dashboard, and put working previews in front of the founders before anything merges. The Free plan is the full product on a VM you already know how to rent.
The agent bottleneck at a startup is rarely the model. It is everything around it: sessions that die with a closed laptop, work scattered across three engineers' terminals, and a founder who wants to see the feature, not a diff. AQ is the harness that removes those.
Parallel by default
Each piece of work gets its own workspace: an isolated git worktree with its own branch, terminal, editor, and preview. One engineer can drive several agents at once without them stepping on each other, and the whole team can see all of it. When your roadmap is longer than your headcount, this is the multiplier: more work in flight per person, with the isolation handled by the platform instead of by discipline. The mechanics are in git worktrees for coding agents.
Founder feedback without a deploy
Every workspace can run its dev server and expose it as a live preview with a shareable link. A cofounder clicks the link, uses the feature the agent just built, and pins comments directly on the preview. Those comments can be sent to the agent as its next prompt. The feedback loop that used to be "deploy to staging, write it up in Slack" becomes "click, comment, agent fixes it."
Always-on without ops
Agent sessions run server-side, so they keep working when laptops close and the team goes home. On the Free plan that server is a personal sandbox AQ creates for you: nothing to install, and it sleeps when you step away. On the Team plan ($50 per user per month early access, standard $200) you can run everything on VMs in your own cloud account with code and CLI logins in your custody, or use the dedicated always-on VM AQ provisions and operates. Compare them on pricing.
Costs that scale with people, not tokens
AQ never meters model usage: agents run on the Claude and OpenAI plans your engineers already pay for, with no markup. A solo founder validating an idea stays on the Free plan at exactly $0: AQ creates the sandbox machine. As the team grows, Team pricing stays straightforward at a per-seat rate.
Frequently asked questions
Do we need a platform engineer to run AQ?
No. On the Free plan you point AQ at a VM in your cloud account and it installs what it needs. On the Team plan there is no VM to manage at all: a dedicated always-on machine is provisioned for you when you subscribe.
Is the Free plan actually the full product?
Yes. For one person, every supported agent CLI, live previews with comments, and the Linear and GitHub integrations are all in the Free plan, on a personal sandbox machine AQ creates for you. Teammates, sharing, and machines in your own cloud are what the Team plan adds.
What happens when we grow past a couple of engineers?
Move to the Team plan and invite teammates into the same workspaces. Invitations are free until accepted, and a seat is only billed once the person actually joins.
Can non-engineers use AQ?
Yes, and at a startup they usually do: a founder or designer opens the workspace preview, tries the feature, and pins comments that flow back to the agent. They never need to touch a terminal.