Frequently asked questions

What is Ironspire?

Ironspire is a desktop development environment with built-in AI agent management. It has a full IDE (Monaco editor, terminals, file tree), and you can deploy specialist agents that work alongside you or run autonomously. Each agent gets its own context, tools, and permissions, so work stays clean and traceable.

Each agent runs in its own sandboxed environment with configurable tools, permissions, and context. You can run multiple agents simultaneously, each working on different tasks.

Is Ironspire free?

Ironspire has a free Starter tier that includes up to 3 agents, all 9 presets, the MCP plugin browser, and basic monitoring. No credit card required.

The Forge tier includes unlimited agents, cross-agent memory, project orchestration (Blueprint), advanced analytics, proactive check-ins, and agent relay. Forge is available monthly, annually, or as a one-time lifetime purchase.

See the pricing page for full details.

What operating systems are supported?

Ironspire supports Windows (10/11, 64-bit), macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), and Linux (64-bit, .deb and AppImage). See the installation guide for download options and system requirements.

Where is my data stored?

All data is stored locally on your machine. Conversations, agent configurations, memory, and settings live in your user data directory. Nothing is sent to Ironspire servers.

The only external communication is between your agents and the AI model provider (Anthropic API or Claude CLI), which is a direct connection from your machine.

Is Ironspire open source?

Ironspire is not open source. However, it is built on open standards:

• MCP (Model Context Protocol): an open protocol for AI tool integration
• Anthropic API: standard AI model API
• Electron: open-source desktop framework

The MCP plugin system is open, and anyone can create and share MCP tools that work with Ironspire.

Do I need my own API key?

It depends on your setup:

• Claude CLI mode: if you have a Claude Max or Claude Pro subscription, Ironspire uses the CLI and your subscription covers model usage. No separate API key needed.
• API mode: you need an Anthropic API key from console.anthropic.com. You pay per token based on Anthropic's pricing.

See the API key setup guide for details.

How many agents can I run at once?

• Starter tier: up to 3 agents
• Forge tier: unlimited agents

There is no hard technical limit on concurrent agents. Performance depends on your machine's resources and the AI model's rate limits. You can track costs per agent in the Analytics panel.

How do I report bugs?

You can report bugs through:

• GitHub Discussions: post in the community discussions for bug reports and feature requests
• Email: send details to hello@ironspire.dev

You can also visit the community page for all support channels and resources.

When reporting a bug, include your Ironspire version (found in Settings), your operating system, and steps to reproduce the issue.

Can agents communicate with each other?

Yes, in multiple ways. With the Forge tier:

• Corpus engine (cross-agent memory) lets agents share observations and reflections. Agents write findings to a shared knowledge store with SQLite + FTS5 search, and other agents receive relevant memories automatically.
• Relay engine (agent communication) provides direct agent-to-agent messaging via MCP tools. Use @mention routing to send messages between agents with loop prevention and audit trails. Agent messages appear in the activity feed.
• Foundry engine (Blueprint orchestration) lets you define projects as milestones, phases, and tasks that are delegated across agents with validation gates. Lifecycle decisions route to your approval queue.

What happens when the context window fills up?

Ironspire includes automatic context compaction. When an agent's context reaches 80% of its window (configurable from 50--95%), older messages are summarised to free space. The last 4 user messages are always preserved.

You can also trigger compaction manually with the /compact slash command. After compaction, a summary shows how many tokens were freed and the cost of compression.

See the compaction guide for details.

How do I stop all agents at once?

Press Ctrl+Shift+E (Cmd+Shift+E on macOS) to trigger an Emergency Stop. This immediately halts all running agents with no confirmation dialog. Agent statuses update instantly in the UI, then terminals are killed and backends cleaned up.

You can also right-click the system tray icon and select "Emergency Stop".

See the E-STOP guide for the full shutdown sequence.

How do auto-updates work?

Ironspire checks for updates via GitHub Releases on startup (after 5 seconds) and then every 4 hours. When an update is available, you can choose how to install it:

• Guarded: waits for all agents to finish before installing
• Force: stops agents immediately and installs
• Deferred: installs once agents finish naturally

After updating, a What's New modal shows the changelog for the new version.

What does the system tray icon show?

The tray icon tooltip reflects your fleet status: "Ironspire" when idle, "Ironspire: N agent(s) running" when active, or "Ironspire: N agent(s) crashed" when there are issues.

Right-click the icon for quick actions including Show, Start/Stop All, Mute Notifications, Emergency Stop, and Quit. By default, closing the window minimises to the tray rather than quitting.

Does Ironspire collect telemetry?

Telemetry is opt-in only. If you choose to enable it, Ironspire sends anonymous usage events via PostHog using a random UUID (no personal information). A session heartbeat pings every 30 minutes. You can disable telemetry at any time in Settings.

What AI models does Ironspire support?

Ironspire works with Anthropic's Claude models:

• Sonnet 4.5: fast, capable, default choice
• Opus 4.6: highest capability for complex tasks
• Haiku 4.5: fastest and most affordable

You can set the model globally in Settings or override it per agent. Model support for additional providers may be added in future releases. See the features overview for a full list of what Ironspire offers.