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How SwarmCo works

SwarmCo is one chat with your corp's orchestrator. You say what you want done; it answers, and for bigger pieces it proposes a team that works on your PC once you approve it. This page is the whole manual.

Your first corp, in six steps

Install SwarmCo from the download page (Windows or Linux) and open it. It updates itself.
Sign in with 2k18 (top right). Your corps, teams and approvals live in your 2k18 account, so this website and your phone can follow them.
Open the Sign in tab: sign in to Claude Code or Codex there (its own sign-in opens in a terminal window; choose Google there if that is how you signed up), or use your 2k18 credits. A program's row turns green by itself; SwarmCo never sees your password or keys. No program? Its row says Get, and the tab can install Claude Code for you. You can also download a model under Local models and run a corp fully on your PC.
Your corp is ready. As soon as something on your PC can run it (a signed-in program, 2k18 credits or a downloaded model), SwarmCo makes My corp by itself; + New corp makes more. It starts on what is ready, with its own folder under Documents\SwarmCo; choose another folder in the box above the chat or later in Set up.
Say what you want done, in plain words, and press Enter. The orchestrator answers in the chat and asks when it needs a yes or no.
Approve the team. For bigger work the orchestrator proposes a team: who is on it, the task and an estimate. Approve starts it, Change says in plain words what to change (it proposes again), Decline drops it. The team's card shows its progress, its current step and a box to tell it something for its next step.

What the words mean

Queued: Sent; your PC picks it up in a moment (here: Waiting for your PC, because the PC does the work).
Starting · Running: The program is working. The card says its current step, the steps so far and a clock.
Waiting for you: A card needs your answer: a team to approve, a command to allow, a question. Answer in the app, here or on your phone; the age on the chip says how long it has waited.
Awake: A finished team kept available for follow-ups until you close it.
Done · Failed · Stopped: The end of a turn or team. A done team shows what it changed, what it checked and what it left undone. A failed turn says why in plain words, with Send it again.
To review: Teams that finished and cards waiting for you, in every corp, until you close or archive them.
Trash: A corp or team you remove stays there for 30 days, and you can restore it.

Where a corp runs: Mode and Thinking

Under Set up, each corp has a Mode and a Thinking level, and SwarmCo picks the model and how hard it thinks from the two. Mode: Local (every model call on this PC, on models you download; your chats and team logs stay in your 2k18 account, which is how this website and your phone show them), Hybrid (the chat and light work on this PC; work that needs more goes to Claude Code or Codex, or to 2k18 credits) or Cloud (everything on Claude Code, Codex or 2k18 credits). Thinking: Light (fast and cheap, for questions, notes and small edits), Balanced (the everyday setting) or Deep (the strongest model, for hard work; slower and dearer). What each costs is on the pricing page. Set up also holds the corp's folder, colour, how many teams may work at once, how long a team may be quiet before SwarmCo asks, and the corp's memory file SWARMCO.md.

Approvals

Every team waits for your go, and a team on Ask asks before each edit or command. There is no "always allow": the card you approve is the whole permission. Closing the SwarmCo window while a team works asks first; closing stops the work in flight.

2k18 credits

No Claude account needed. Choose Use 2k18 credits in the Sign in tab: Claude Code runs on your PC and talks to Claude through 2k18, and each answer is paid from your 2k18 balance at SwarmCo's rates (see Pricing); one credit is one US cent. The first message of a corp costs about 40 credits, because Claude Code's whole prompt is written to the cache; later ones cost a few credits. Agents run on Sonnet unless an agent names another model.

Set a cap per team under Set up (Credits cap per team); a team stops when it reaches it. Usage this week shows what your credits went on, by model and by run. Switch back to your own sign-in in the same tab at any time. Your balance is at the top right of the app.

What SwarmCo sends where

Model calls: With your own sign-in, Claude Code or Codex sends your instructions and the parts of your files it reads from your PC to its maker (Anthropic or OpenAI), under your own account. On a local model, nowhere: they run on your PC. With 2k18 credits, those calls go through 2k18 on the way to Anthropic, and 2k18 counts their tokens.
Chats and team logs: Kept in your 2k18 account: your messages and the replies, each team's log, the names of the files it changed and how many lines, and your answers to its cards. That is how this website and your phone show them.
Files: Stay in the corp's folder on your PC. Their contents and the line-by-line changes are not kept in your 2k18 account.

Local models and JEV

What downloads. On the first start, before you sign in, SwarmCo offers one model for your PC: the one that runs its Balanced level there (Qwen3.5 9B, a 5.7 GB download, on most PCs with 16 GB of memory or an 8 GB graphics card; on a PC under 8 GB, Qwen3.5 4B, 2.7 GB). The card names the size and the free space; once the download starts, the bar at the top says the time left at your speed. Local models (left, under On this PC) lists the rest, from a 0.5 GB test model to 22 GB, and Set up for me offers the right one again. Each download needs its size plus 1 GB free on the drive, or it does not start and says both numbers; a second Get waits its turn. Every file is checked by size and checksum.

When it runs. A model loads only when a corp needs it; the chat says about how many seconds it takes on your PC once that is measured. It leaves memory 2 minutes after its last job, or 10 or 30 minutes as you choose under Local models. Models that Red0 downloaded on the same PC are shared: one copy on disk, used by both.

JEV is SwarmCo's own small model (about 750 MB), set up from the first-run card or the JEV lab: it uses your Python 3.10 or newer, or on Windows the Python that comes with SwarmCo (on Linux without Python: sudo apt install python3 python3-venv). Agents may ask it quick typed questions. It also learns from this PC's own runs which work needed Claude Code or Codex: after 50 runs it trains its router, with no Python needed, and once it is right on 85% of at least 50 runs it is sure of, it routes Hybrid chat turns; Local models says since when. It never reads your Claude Code or Codex history.

Where the files live. On Windows in %APPDATA%\swarmco-app\state, on Linux in ~/.config/swarmco-app/state: the models in models, JEV's environment in jev/venv, its router in jev/trained and the log it learns from in jev/routing.jsonl. They stay on your PC.

Removing them. Remove on a model's row deletes its file (a model shared with Red0 stays in Red0's folder). Remove the environment in the JEV lab deletes JEV's 750 MB. Uninstalling SwarmCo keeps this folder; delete it by hand, with SwarmCo closed, to free the space.

This website and your phone

Sign in here to see every corp's chat and its teams from any browser, message the orchestrator and answer its cards. SwarmCo for Android shows the same and tells you when something waits. Hosting a corp needs the SwarmCo app on Windows or Linux: that PC does the work, and what you send from here reaches it when it is on.

When something fails

"The program is not signed in": open the Sign in tab, click the program's row and finish the sign-in in the terminal window, then Send it again.
"Your 2k18 credits ran out": add credits from the balance at the top right, or switch to your own sign-in in the Sign in tab, then Send it again.
"This team reached its credits cap": raise Credits cap per team under Set up, then Send it again.
A team sits at Queued: the PC that hosts the corp is off or signed out; start SwarmCo there.
"No local model is downloaded" or "Not enough free space": see Local models and JEV; the free-space line names what the model needs and what the drive has.
"Quiet for N minutes, still going?": the team said and did nothing for a while. Continue keeps it working, Stop ends it; open its Log tab to see its last steps.
The provider's limit: the team stops on your Claude Code or Codex limit, not on its work; its card says which limit and when it resets, and Resume when it resets picks it up where it was.
Anything else: the Activity fold at the bottom of the window keeps the plain-words log of what SwarmCo did; the program's own words are one fold away on a failed card.

SwarmCo is made by 2k18. Account, credits and sign-in questions: 2k18 help.