---
title: "Welcome to Shiba"
description: "Get help with your work, from the first brief to the finished draft."
---

> Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://tryshiba.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Welcome to Shiba

Shiba gives you AI employees for the work behind your company: engineering, design, marketing, sales, operations, finance, and research.

Ask for a campaign draft, an account brief, a draft budget from figures you supply, or a code change. Review the proposed task and approve it when you're ready.

- [Start your first task](/docs/getting-started/) — Go from a short brief to a result you can review.
- [Choose an employee](/docs/employees/) — Give an employee a role and instructions for the work you do.

## What an employee can help with

| Work | Example outcome |
| --- | --- |
| Marketing | A launch brief or announcement draft grounded in your product notes. |
| Research | A sourced report that separates findings from open questions. |
| Operations | A handoff, support summary, or repeatable checklist. |
| Engineering and QA | A focused change, test, or review with evidence. |
| Design, sales, and finance | A specification, account brief, or draft analysis using context you provide. |

Start with an [employee](/docs/employees/), then give it a specific outcome and the context it needs. Its available connections and permissions depend on your setup.

## Keep your work together

Use [threads](/docs/dashboard/) to keep a task and its follow-ups in one conversation. Save instructions you often reuse as [skills](/docs/skills/).

Before work runs in your repository, Shiba asks you to [approve the request](/docs/approval-gates/). Read the result and its checks before you use or publish it.

## What you need

You'll need access to a Shiba workspace and a GitHub repository for the work. Documents and other non-code tasks use a repository too.

Shiba is free to self-host. Hosting and model usage can cost money; see [costs](/docs/costs/). If you're setting up a workspace for the first time, follow the [self-hosting guide](/docs/self-hosting/).

Need help? Start with [common questions](/docs/troubleshooting/). Shiba is under active development; [product status](/docs/product-status/) explains current limits.

Source: https://tryshiba.dev/docs/overview/index.mdx