Plain words
What everything here means
Six words do most of the work here, and each is explained only once. If a word on this site sent you looking, it is defined below in plain language.
The six that matter
A recording, the SOP, and the AI that reads it
In the order they happen. A person approves the SOP before anyone relies on it. The last two are optional.
- Recording — the job, done once
- What Steptree captures while somebody does a job once: the goal they stated, and the judgement calls and notes they flagged. Also every click, everything typed and a picture of each screen.
- SOP — the written procedure
- The step-by-step document Steptree writes from a recording: the goal, numbered steps with screenshots under them, the decision points and the things to know. It stays a draft until a person approves it. The app calls it a Document.
- MCP — how your own AI reads it
- The standard AI tools use to connect to other software. Connect Claude, or another AI tool Steptree has a setup guide for, and it can search and read your SOPs. It works on every plan, with a personal key that expires.
- Steptree AI — the AI in the Steptree App
- The chat in the Steptree App. Ask it how a job is done here and it answers from your SOPs. It can also do the steps with you on your computer, asking before each action.
- Skill — the SOP, as a portable file
- An SOP compiled into a SKILL.md file: ordinary markdown in the open agent-skill format that other AI tools read. It downloads on any plan.
- Agent — optional: the procedure, running
- One or more of your skills, plus the tools it is allowed to use and the limits you set. It carries out your procedure rather than improvising, cites the SOP it followed, and runs in the cloud or on your own machine.
The rest
Everything else you will meet
You do not need any of this before you start. It is here so you have a definition when you do.
- Draft
- What every SOP, skill and agent is when Steptree creates it. A person reads it, fixes anything wrong and approves it before anyone relies on it.
- Decision point
- A judgement call, recorded at the moment somebody makes it: what they chose and why. It is the part a screen recorder cannot see: the part that explains why, not just what happened.
- Things to know
- Notes flagged while recording: what a screen means, which record is the right one, a caveat that only matters here. They become their own section of the SOP.
- Share link
- A link to one SOP that anyone can open without signing in. You choose, one SOP at a time, whether it is private, shared with its team, or public.
- Redaction
- Keeping sensitive things out of what is stored. Password boxes and secure fields are never captured at all, and emails and card numbers are stripped from recorded text. Screenshots are kept as taken.
- Workspace
- Your company's library and people. Each workspace is sealed off from every other one by the database itself, and the SOPs inside it belong to teams.
- Credit
- What AI work is measured in. Writing an SOP, compiling a skill, a chat turn, a run — each spends credits at a rate that depends on the model, not on your plan. Every plan includes a monthly allowance, and the free models cost nothing at all.
- Approval
- The moment Steptree AI or an agent stops and waits for a person. Before it acts on the desktop, before a step you have marked, or whenever it hits something outside the procedure it was given.
- Runtime
- Where an agent works. Cloud means on our servers with nobody present — a schedule at 6am, an email arriving. Desktop means on your own computer, with a real keyboard and screen.
- Trigger
- What makes an agent start on its own. A time of day, an email, a form, a file appearing in a folder, a record changing in a connected system, or a webhook from anywhere.
- Channel
- Where your team talks to an agent — Slack, Teams, email, your helpdesk, a widget on your own site. The agent answers there rather than expecting anybody to come to a new tool.
- Tribal knowledge
- The way a job is really done here: the order, the exceptions, the threshold nobody wrote down. It usually lives in a few people's heads until somebody records the job.
Next
Where to go from here
How it works
The same words in the order they happen, and what you decide at each step.
Common questions
What it does, what it costs, what happens to your data, and how quickly it pays off.
Documentation
What a written procedure holds, and what it is like to keep one current.
Do one real job once, and read the SOP Steptree writes
Record it on Windows or Mac. Steptree writes the SOP with the goal, the steps and the judgement calls. Approve it, share it with your team, and connect your AI. Free to start, no card.
