Telos

What it is

Telos Cloud is a platform that enables developers to define software through declarative goal specifications rather than by writing and maintaining code. Instead of imperative step-by-step instructions, users describe their desired outcome—what interfaces, constraints, and data requirements they need—and the platform automatically builds, tests, deploys, and evolves the running software in the background.

The system collapses traditional development, testing, and production environments into one persistent sandboxed space. Developers can describe a goal using a spec file, preview changes with the CLI, apply them to run services in the cloud, and iterate by updating the specification. The platform uses background agents to continuously reconcile the running software with the goal specification, treating generated code as an invisible implementation detail.

Telos is built for developers who want to step out of the loop of managing code and agents, and instead focus on defining what they want to build. The platform handles the complexity of infrastructure, deployment, verification, and evolution autonomously. It integrates with multiple inference providers including a managed option, ChatGPT, xAI, or user-supplied API keys.

Questions from the bench

What is a goal specification in Telos?

A goal specification is a persistent, versioned artifact that describes your desired software service. It defines what interfaces/APIs are exposed, what constraints you operate under (SLAs/SLOs), and what data gets stored. Unlike imperative code, it captures the intended outcome rather than implementation details.

How does Telos handle code generation and updates?

Telos treats generated code as an invisible compiled artifact. When you update your goal specification, you use the CLI commands telos plan to preview changes and telos apply to have the system reconcile the running software against the updated goal specification in the background.

What inference providers does Telos support?

Telos supports managed inference through its default and max options, connected subscriptions for ChatGPT and xAI, and bring-your-own-key (BYOK) options for OpenAI, Anthropic, OpenRouter, or xAI with your own API key.

How do you get started with Telos?

Install Telos with the provided script, run telos login to authenticate to Telos Cloud, and read the installed telos-cli skill to learn the workflow. You can then create goal specifications and deploy them using the telos plan and telos apply commands.