---
title: "Applications"
description: "Your own AI work, and Assay inside an agent loop."
---

Assay is one store. How you fill it depends on what you are doing.

## Your own work with AI

You already talk to a coding harness. Assay reads the session logs that harness already wrote.

**Mode:** `corpus` (the `assay init` default).

**Fill the store:** `assay capture …` and `assay sweep on`.

**Labels:** core. `assay labelling on`. Place sittings on the [objective tree](/objectives). Set [type](/type) (kind of work).

**Read:** [Dashboard](/dashboard), [search](/search), [share](/share) a sitting when someone outside needs the whole conversation.

This path answers: *what did I spend, on what, for which product, and what did we actually say.*

## Observability in an agent loop

You ship a product that calls models. Assay records each unit of work as it happens. It is still not in the request path: you call `record` **after** the model returns, or you export traces to the ingest door.

**Mode:** `observability`.

**Fill the store:** embed the library, or [point OpenTelemetry at `assay serve`](/ingest).

**Labels:** optional. Sweep without labelling is enough. A cheap local judge is allowed. Do not treat that pass as corpus quality.

**Read:** `assay turns --json` is the debug surface. The dashboard still works. Embedding `<assay-dashboard>` puts the same panels inside your own app, behind your login.

This path answers: *what did this loop spend, per user, per session, per task — and what did the loop say.*

See [Agent loop](/agent-loop) and [Debug console](/debug).

## Same ledger, different consent

| | Corpus | Observability |
|---|---|---|
| Who the work is for | You, building | Your users, running your agent |
| Capture | File sweep of harness logs | `record` / `recordTurn` or OTLP |
| Labelling | Turn it on | Optional |
| Judge over full text | Sovereignty gate | Same gate |
| Typical next read | Dashboard, objectives, share | `assay turns`, spend, waste |

Init writes `mode: "corpus"` and both switches **off**. You choose.

## What Assay never is

It does not wrap the model. It does not retry your calls. It does not hold API keys for providers you did not name. One verb, `assay pricing watch`, fetches **public** rate cards. That is the only network call in the CLI, and it does not open the store.