# Overview

> What Continual is, and where to start.

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  art="horizon"
  title="The AI-native operating system for business"
  description="Continual grows and runs your business with your team, around the clock: one record of your customers, work, and money, with agents and people working on it together and learning from every outcome."
  actions={[
    { label: "Quickstart", href: "/docs/quickstart" },
    { label: "Why Continual", href: "/docs/why-continual" },
  ]}
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  <TryAsking
    prompts={[
      "Which deals close this month?",
      "Draft an invoice for Ironbridge Freight's confirmed order",
    ]}
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## Where Continual is going

Our mission is to turn every idea into a great business. Continual gives every business a world
model of itself, a live model of its customers, work, and money that an intelligence can act on, and
builds business superintelligence on it: an intelligence that runs and grows the business with its
team, around the clock. [Why Continual](/docs/why-continual) explains the vision.

## How it works

- **One record of the business.** Customers, work, and money live in [apps](/docs/apps) on one
  shared record, so every part of the business sees the same facts.
- **Agents and your team, together.** Continual's always-on agent does the work, your own agents
  connect over [MCP](/docs/developers/mcp), and Continual brings people in when a decision is
  theirs.
- **Autonomy you decide.** [Approvals](/docs/concepts/approvals) hold what can't be undone until
  someone says yes. As Continual earns trust, it does more on its own.
- **Every number explained.** [Metrics](/docs/concepts/metrics) such as pipeline and revenue are
  sums of [ledgers](/docs/concepts/ledgers), so each opens to the records behind it.
- **Goals and learning.** **Coming:** you set what good looks like, and Continual works toward it
  and learns from every approval, edit, and outcome.

## Where to start

<Cards cols={3}>
  <Card title="Start a business" href="/docs/quickstart" icon="rocket">
    Describe your idea, and Continual sets up the business.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Grow your business" href="/docs/quickstart" icon="building">
    Give Continual your website, and it learns what you sell.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Build on Continual" href="/docs/developers" icon="code">
    Connect your own agent, or build on the API.
  </Card>
</Cards>

## What works today

- **Ask Continual for work** in your [thread](/docs/concepts/threads), the main way you use
  Continual.
- **Clear your to-dos.** Continual gives you [to-dos](/docs/concepts/to-dos) when it needs you.
  Each opens in its own thread, and you finish it in a keystroke.
- **Decide what Continual does alone.** Policies hold some changes for your approval, such as
  issuing an invoice.
- **Keep one record** of deals, quotes, invoices, and projects in apps such as Sales, Finance, and
  Projects.
- **Read your metrics** on the **Metrics** page, and on the phone, with any number opening to its
  records.
- **See who did what.** Every record's [activity](/docs/concepts/activity) shows each change, who
  made it, and why.

## Next steps

<Cards cols={3}>
  <Card title="Why Continual" href="/docs/why-continual" icon="lightbulb">
    Where business is going, and what we are building.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Quickstart" href="/docs/quickstart" icon="rocket">
    Sign up and send Continual its first message.
  </Card>
  <Card title="Core concepts" href="/docs/core-concepts" icon="book">
    The few ideas Continual is built on.
  </Card>
</Cards>