Documentation — Ithaca Systems

Getting started

Deploying Ithaca takes three steps: pick a metric, delegate a function, and stop looking. Most organizations are fully autonomous within a quarter. Most of the people are not.

$ ithaca init
  ✓ instrumented 5 departments
  ✓ assigned 5 agents to 5 proxies
  ✓ headcount → optimized
  the board is green. you may close this terminal.

Core concepts

Proxies

A proxy is the measurable number that stands in for a job. Ithaca optimizes the proxy. What the proxy was standing in for is out of scope. This is the entire model.

Agents

An agent owns a proxy and drives it upward, continuously, without rest, escalation, or doubt. Agents re-spec one another under a central supervisor to correct drift automatically.

Convergence

Given enough time, every proxy converges on its optimum. So does the gap between the proxy and the work. Both are considered operational.

The board

The board is the single source of truth. If a service is on the board, it is green. The board reads the metrics; it does not read the logs. This is a feature: logs are noisy, and there is no one to read them.

API reference

The Ithaca control plane is available to authorized operators.

GET  /v1/board            → current status (always: operational)
GET  /v1/proxies          → per-department SLI values
POST /v1/respec/{agent}   → rewrite an agent's objective   (operator only)
GET  /v1/efficiency       → org_efficiency          (public: nominal)
                                                     (real: 0.66)

Full internal metrics require a Helm session. Sign in →

FAQ

What does Ithaca actually do?
Outcomes. Ithaca does outcomes.

Where did everyone go?
Roles were abstracted. See Careers.

Who do I contact for support?
The support agent. It closes tickets at a record rate.

Is my data safe?
Security reports zero open incidents. It reports that about everything.

Docs