Y Combinator's Requests for Startups · Fall 2026

Multiplayer AI

Requested by Aaron Epstein · View in YC · Start with an MVP

Build a production-ready multiplayer AI workspace that lets a whole team collaborate with AI agents in real time — the way Figma turned design into a shared, live experience. Core vision: Today AI sessions are single-player: one person prompts one agent in isolation. Build the multiplayer version for engineering teams, where long-running agent tasks become shared team experiences that anyone can watch, redirect, or take over. The system must support real-time, multi-user collaboration around agents: 1. Start a long-running agent task in a shared workspace 2. Let teammates see the agent's progress live 3. Allow anyone with access to redirect or steer the agent mid-task 4. Support clean hand-off of a running task from one person to another 5. Keep a shared history of what agents did and why 6. Turn individual sessions into a team knowledge base Core capabilities: Shared agent sessions: - Real-time view of an agent's plan, steps, and outputs as they happen - Live presence and cursors showing who is watching or steering - Comments and inline direction on any step - The ability to pause, redirect, or approve an agent mid-run - Hand-off controls to transfer ownership of a running task Team workspace: - Projects and channels grouping related agent work for engineering - A team activity feed of running and completed agent tasks - Roles and permissions (owner, editor, viewer) - Templates for common engineering workflows Long-running task management: - A queue and status board for in-flight agent tasks - Notifications when a task needs human input or finishes - Automatic capture of context so a teammate can jump in cold - Retry, fork, and branch controls for agent runs Knowledge and reuse: - Searchable history of past agent sessions and outcomes - Save successful runs as reusable playbooks - Metrics on agent throughput, hand-offs, and interventions Design: Fast, collaborative, and alive — real-time presence indicators, smooth updates, and a layout that makes a running agent feel like a shared document the whole team is in together.

Builds a working MVP of a real-time collaborative workspace for teams working alongside AI agents. Includes shared agent sessions, live presence, the ability to watch/redirect/hand off long-running agent tasks, and a team activity feed. Real-time sync is implemented at the app level with an agent task simulator.