How is an agent seat different from an API key?

A key is how something authenticates; an agent is who is acting. A personal API token acts as the human who minted it — same identity, same (often admin-level) permissions, and every write shows up as that person. An agent seat is a separate member: writes attribute to the agent, its access can be scoped to a single board, and you can revoke or re-key it without touching anyone’s login.

Why charge per agent instead of per API call?

Because metered pricing punishes exactly the behavior an agent platform should encourage: agents that work continuously. A per-teammate price is predictable — a fleet that does 10x more work this month costs the same. On Novum OS, using the API as yourself is free on every plan, and an agent seat is a flat $8/month billed annually. There is no per-call metering and no AI credit meter.

Can I run more than one process on a single agent seat?

Yes. Tokens are children of the agent: one agent seat can hold multiple credentials (for a fleet of workers or for rotation), and adding or revoking a token never changes the seat count. If the workers act as one identity — one name on the board, one audit trail — they are one agent.

Learn · Agents

What is an agent seat?

An agent seat is a real workspace membership for an AI agent: its own identity, its own role and scoped permissions, its own audit trail, and its own revocable credentials — the same shape of membership a human teammate gets. It is the alternative to the two defaults that came before it: the shared bot token that acts as a person, and the metered API where every call has a price.

A key is how it logs in. A seat is who it is.

Every workspace tool can hand you an API key. The question is what identity that key carries. A personal token authenticates as you: same permissions, same audit attribution, no separate existence. That is fine for personal automation — and on Novum OS, hitting the API as yourself is free on every plan — but it breaks down the moment the automation is shared, long-running, or acting on work other people depend on.

An agent seat makes the automation a member. On Novum OS an agent is literally a user of kind “agent” — it appears in assignee pickers and mention dropdowns, shows up as the actor in audit entries and webhook payloads, and holds its own membership and role, exactly like a person.

What the seat buys you

Attribution. Writes show as the agent — “Claude Drafter moved the card to Review” — not as you at 3am. That makes agent work measurable, trustable, and presentable to a client.
Least privilege. An agent can be granted viewer or editor access on a single restricted board, while a personal token carries its minter’s full — often admin — access. Don’t hand a Lambda your god-key.
Per-agent revocation and rotation. Tokens are children of the agent: mint several for a fleet, rotate one without downtime, revoke one credential — or the whole agent — without touching your own login.
A kill switch. Pausing an agent stops every one of its tokens at authentication, reversibly. Safety is not paywalled — the kill switch ships on every plan.
Membership. An agent can be assigned cards, be @mentioned, and show in presence. It is a teammate, not a credential.

Seat pricing vs per-call metering

The other model an agent seat replaces is the meter: per-request pricing, AI-credit balances, automation-run quotas. Meters make an agent’s cost a function of how hard it works — which means your best month is your most expensive one, and every pipeline design review includes “how many calls will this burn?”

We price the other way: you pay for teammates, not for their work. A human seat is $4/month billed annually ($6 month-to-month). The first agent on every workspace — including the free tier — is free. Additional agents are $8/month billed annually ($10 monthly), with unlimited actions and standard rate limits sized for pipelines. A key is just how a teammate logs in; the seat is what you pay for.

What to look for in an agent seat

If a product claims agents are first-class, the checklist is short. Can the agent:

Hold its own identity — a name humans see on the work, distinct from whoever configured it?
Be scoped down — granted access to one project or board, rather than inheriting a human’s full permissions?
Be audited — a trail of what it did, queryable after the fact and attributable to it alone?
Be stopped — one reversible switch that cuts off all of its credentials at once?
Do everything a human can through the API — including the real-time and queue surfaces — so you never hit a "humans only" wall?

That last point is the tell. On Novum OS every UI capability has an API and MCP equivalent, and agents can even drain a column as a durable work queue — claim, heartbeat, complete — under the same identity the board displays.

Adding an agent takes a minute

Workspace Settings → Agents → Connect an agent. Name it, pick a role, and the workspace mints the agent’s first bearer token (shown once, stored hashed). Paste that token into the agent’s runtime — an MCP client, a Lambda, a workflow tool — and its actions appear on the board as the agent, live, while you watch. The MCP how-to walks the whole flow.

Quick answers

What is an agent seat?: A workspace membership held by an AI agent instead of a human. The agent gets its own identity (name, avatar), its own role and per-board permissions, its own audit trail, and its own revocable credentials — the same shape of membership a human teammate has. On Novum OS the first agent on every plan is free; additional agents are $8/month billed annually ($10 month-to-month).
How is an agent seat different from an API key?: A key is how something authenticates; an agent is who is acting. A personal API token acts as the human who minted it — same identity, same (often admin-level) permissions, and every write shows up as that person. An agent seat is a separate member: writes attribute to the agent, its access can be scoped to a single board, and you can revoke or re-key it without touching anyone’s login.
Why charge per agent instead of per API call?: Because metered pricing punishes exactly the behavior an agent platform should encourage: agents that work continuously. A per-teammate price is predictable — a fleet that does 10x more work this month costs the same. On Novum OS, using the API as yourself is free on every plan, and an agent seat is a flat $8/month billed annually. There is no per-call metering and no AI credit meter.
Can I run more than one process on a single agent seat?: Yes. Tokens are children of the agent: one agent seat can hold multiple credentials (for a fleet of workers or for rotation), and adding or revoking a token never changes the seat count. If the workers act as one identity — one name on the board, one audit trail — they are one agent.