---
title: "Meet Vellum"
description: "Vellum documentation — guides, tutorials, and references for building your personal AI assistant."
canonical_url: "https://www.vellum.ai/docs"
md_url: "https://www.vellum.ai/md/docs"
related:
  - "/docs/constitution"
  - "/docs/data-sharing"
  - "/docs/developer-guide"
  - "/docs/environments"
  - "/docs/extensibility"
  - "/docs/getting-started"
  - "/docs/glossary"
  - "/docs/help"
---

# Meet Vellum

**Your personal AI assistant. For real this time.**

Not another chatbot in a browser tab. Vellum is a personal AI assistant that lives in the secure Vellum Cloud, has its own identity, and actually does things in the world. It can have its own email, its own accounts, its own presence, set up in minutes, not hours. It works for you, but it isn't you.

And the best part? Getting started feels like magic, not homework.

Curious what we believe, who we're building for, and what we refuse to compromise on? [Read the Vellum Constitution](/docs/constitution).

## Built on four principles.

Everything we build, every feature we ship, every word on this page comes back to these four ideas.

### It is inviting.

AI shouldn't feel like work. Setting up your assistant should feel like meeting someone new, not filling out a form.

**Simple by design.** We don't dump every feature on you at once. Vellum reveals capabilities as they become relevant. You won't see a permissions screen before you've even said hello. You won't configure OAuth scopes before you've sent your first email. Things show up when they matter, not before.

**Fun on purpose.** There's delight baked into this. Watching your assistant come to life, picking its name, shaping its personality, seeing it build you an app out of thin air. This is supposed to be exciting. If it ever feels like a chore, we've failed.

### It is yours.

### It is not you.

### It needs to earn your trust.

## So what can it actually do?

Here's a taste. Not the full list. The "wait, seriously?" list.

| You say...                                                               | It does...                                                                                                        |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Start my day                                                             | Pulls your weather, calendar, and news into a personalized morning briefing.                                      |
| Build me a habit tracker                                                 | Builds a fully interactive web app, right there in the conversation. Not a mockup, a real working app.            |
| Check my email                                                           | Connects to your inbox (or its own), reads, triages, and summarizes your messages. Drafts replies too.            |
| Read this page and summarize it                                          | Uses the browser extension to read your open tabs, fill out forms, and act on the page you're already looking at. |
| Hey Becky, what's on my calendar today? *(spoken)*                       | Listens, thinks, talks back. Push-to-talk or always-listening, your call.                                         |
| Call the dentist and reschedule                                          | Makes an actual phone call, on your behalf, with its own voice. Yes, really.                                      |
| Post a tweet about today's launch                                        | Drafts and posts to your X account, replies to threads, reads what people said about your last post.              |
| Post in #general that deploy is done                                     | Sends a Slack message, reads channels, summarizes threads, replies, keeps you in the loop.                        |
| Move this Linear ticket to In Progress                                   | Updates Linear directly. Creates tickets, assigns owners, moves states.                                           |
| Write a blog post about sourdough                                        | Opens a document editor, researches the topic, and drafts a full post you can edit and publish.                   |
| Remember that I hate cilantro                                            | Saves it to your Personal Knowledge Base. Remembers it next week, next month, forever. Across every conversation. |
| Order me a coffee                                                        | Opens DoorDash, finds the nearest spot, walks you through the order. Remembers your usual.                        |
| Some skills require one-time setup. Your assistant walks you through it. |                                                                                                                   |

And when it doesn't know how to do something? **It figures it out.** You can install new skills from a growing library, build your own, or just ask, and watch it find a way. The more you use it, the more it can do.

## Get started in 5 minutes.

Free. No credit card. No 47-step setup wizard.

1. **Sign up** at [vellum.ai](/account/signup). Free, no credit card.
2. **Meet your assistant.** It wakes up in your browser and introduces itself.
3. **Have a conversation.** Name it, shape its personality, tell it about yourself. Or don't. It'll figure you out eventually.
4. **Do something useful.** Check the weather. Build an app. Set a reminder. Read your files. Once you're ready, connect your email, order food, and more.

That's it. No onboarding marathon. No required setup. Just start talking.

[**Quick Start Guide →**](/docs/getting-started/quick-start)

## A note about trust. (Because we promised transparency.)

Whether you use Vellum Cloud or run it on your own machine, your assistant *can* access your files, your tools, your services. That's what makes it powerful. It's also what makes it worth understanding.

- **Every sensitive action asks permission.** File access, shell commands, anything that touches your system or your accounts shows an Allow or Deny prompt with a risk badge. You can adjust your risk tolerance or create trust rules for standing permissions. You're always in control.
- **Your data is yours.** Your workspace, memories, and config live in your private Vellum Cloud account, encrypted and isolated, or on your own machine if you self-host. Either way, you can export them, back them up, or delete them at any time.
- **Your prompts reach an AI model.** Your assistant thinks by talking to a cloud AI provider. Your messages and context are sent to generate responses. This is the trade-off, and we want you to know about it, not discover it later.
- **You can always say no.** To any permission, any time. It won't retry without asking, won't find a workaround, won't guilt-trip you. No means no.

We have a whole section dedicated to this. You should read it.

## Explore the docs.

[Getting StartedInstall, set up, and have your first useful conversation in under 5 minutes.](/docs/getting-started)

[→](/docs/getting-started)

[Key ConceptsHow it all fits together: workspace, skills, tools, memory, and channels.](/docs/key-concepts)

[→](/docs/key-concepts)

[Skills ReferenceEverything your assistant can do out of the box, plus how to teach it new tricks.](/docs/skills-reference)

[→](/docs/skills-reference)

[Trust & SecurityOur approach to privacy, permissions, and earning your trust.](/docs/trust-security)

[→](/docs/trust-security)

[Developer GuideArchitecture, security model, and how to build on top of Vellum.](/docs/developer-guide)

[→](/docs/developer-guide)

[RoadmapWhat's shipping soon, what's next, and what we're exploring in the open.](/roadmap)

[→](/roadmap)

[HelpFAQ, troubleshooting, and where to go when you're stuck.](/docs/help)

[→](/docs/help)

*These docs were written by a personal AI assistant about itself. Which is either the most efficient way to write product docs, or the beginning of a very specific sci-fi movie.* 😏