# Farms and desks

> Specialized bots at durable desks on one workplace — an agent farm, not a spam bot farm, and not one hero coworker.

Canonical: https://chattic.us/wiki/farms-and-desks/

**Farms and desks** is Chatticus's picture of the [agent workplace](/wiki/agent-workplace): several specialized bots, each with a desk (a role, memory, and a beat), sharing one [computer](/wiki/shared-computer).

A **desk** is the durable job. Copy, books, research, ops. The bot at that desk is a [named teammate](/wiki/named-teammates), not a worker pulled from a pool.

A **farm** is the collection of those desks. In public we say **agent farm** when we need the agricultural metaphor. We don't say **bot farm**: that phrase already means spam and click fraud.

## What this is not

It isn't a [software factory](/wiki/software-factory). Factories optimize a delivery pipeline (spec, branch, review, merge). Farms optimize a *roster* of ongoing work.

It isn't [digital labor](/wiki/digital-labor) as a seat replacement. The farm doesn't clock in as a department of interchangeable juniors.

It isn't a swarm. Swarms are impressive in demos and amnesiac in production.

## Current events

When a vendor ships a new multi-desk farm, a new "team of agents," or a new argument that one hero agent is enough, that belongs on **Agent Zoo**, linked from this page as a related post — not as a new wiki article named after the vendor.

## Related posts

- [Why we started](/updates/why-we-started/)
- [A farm of desks](/agent-zoo/farms-and-desks/)
- [A wiki that couldn't say no](/agent-zoo/wiki-that-couldnt-say-no/)