Centra is live, and almost nobody can use it. That is deliberate. We are in what we call operator preview: we onboard one user at a time, we do it personally, and we do not charge for it. Each new operator gets the full product (Neo, Cortex, Ion, receipts, the whole machine), not a demo build with the sharp edges filed off. This post explains why we chose this shape and what it means if you want in.
What operator preview is
An operator preview is not a waitlist with a nicer name. There is no drip campaign and no tiered access. When you join, someone on the team walks you through setup, provisions your machine, and stays reachable while you get your first real work running. You use the same product we use. When something breaks, you tell a person who can fix it, and it gets fixed.
The preview is free. Not freemium, not a trial that converts. Free, for the duration of the preview. We are not ready to charge for something we are still learning to operate at your scale, and we do not want billing anxiety shaping how you use it. We want you to hand Neo real work and see what happens.
Why we launch slowly
The honest answer: because of what Centra touches. An agent that drafts emails can launch to a million users on day one. The worst case is embarrassment. Neo works with your accounts, your files, your money. It acts in the world on your behalf. The worst case is not embarrassment.
We built a lot of machinery to make that safe: approval gates, leashes, signed receipts, a verifier that fails toward refusal. We test all of it before it ships. But there is a category of knowledge you cannot get from testing: how the system behaves in the hands of a person with their own accounts, their own habits, and their own definition of "done." Agents that touch money and real accounts earn trust one user at a time. There is no shortcut, so we stopped looking for one.
What preview users get
Three things, concretely. First, a machine of your own: Neo runs in a private environment provisioned for you alone, with its own compute, storage, and memory. It's yours for as long as you're with us. Second, launch pricing locked: whatever we charge at general availability, preview operators keep the launch rate. You took a risk on unfinished software; the discount is permanent. Third, a direct line to the people who built the product, with the context and authority to act on what you find.
What we're watching for
This preview is not marketing. It is the last and most important evaluation layer, and we are watching specific things. Where approvals sit in the flow: an approval gate that fires too early is noise, one that fires too late is a failure, and only real usage shows us where the line actually belongs. What memory gets wrong: Cortex is designed to behave like memory (recent detail sharp, old detail compressed), and we want to know when it compresses something you needed sharp. Where receipts fall short: a receipt proves what a run did, and we want to find the questions operators ask that a receipt cannot yet answer.
When operators surface these, we change the product. Several of the safeguards described in our safety report exist because an early operator found the gap. That loop (real use, honest report, real fix) is the entire point of doing it this way.
How to get in
Write to us through the contact page. Tell us what you would hand an agent if you trusted one. We read everything, and we onboard in the order that teaches us the most, which sometimes means the person with the strangest workflow goes first. If your work involves real accounts, real money, and a real reason to want proof over promises, you are exactly who this preview is for.