What is Poly (usepoly.co)?

Poly is a multiplayer AI coding workspace: a shared room where your team works with one AI agent, together. It runs in the browser at usepoly.co. Everyone in a room sees what was asked and what the AI changed, any member can approve a change before it happens or undo it after, and every turn ends with a receipt naming who ran it, which model and what it cost. The AI can be Claude, GPT, Grok, Kimi or Muse. Poly is made by Colorful Aura Inc. in New York, and it is free to start.

Poly at a glance

Which Poly is this?

Several companies use the name. This page is about Poly at usepoly.co, sometimes written "Usepoly".

• PolyAI (poly.ai) makes voice assistants that answer customer-service phone calls. Searches for "PolyAI pricing" are about them.
• Google Poly was Google's library of 3D models. Google shut it down in 2021.
• Poly, formerly Plantronics, makes headsets and conference-room hardware, and is now part of HP.

None of them is related to Poly the AI workspace.

How does Poly work?

A project in Poly is a room with a git workspace behind it.

1. Someone types a prompt. The AI replies in a timeline every member watches live.
2. The AI asks before it acts, in the modes that ask. An approval card appears on every member's screen, in plain language. Whoever gets to it first decides, and the timeline records who.
3. The AI asks questions as cards. Members' picks show up live, so the room agrees before anyone submits.
4. Every turn ends with a receipt. It names who ran it, which model, how long it took and the credits it cost, charged to that person. Any turn can be undone from its receipt.
5. The app runs beside the chat. Members open a live preview of what the AI built without cloning anything, and can publish a snapshot.
6. The team talks where the AI can't hear. Group chat, threads and polls sit beside the timeline, and the AI never reads them.

Every turn runs in its own isolated sandbox with allowlist-only network access. Nobody brings an API key or installs anything.

What does Poly do that other tools don't?

In September 2026 we reviewed 21 products that call themselves multiplayer or collaborative AI coding tools. Three things in Poly appeared on none of their sites:

• A receipt on every turn: who ran it, which model, what it cost.
• An approval any member can give mid-turn, not only the person who typed the prompt.
• A side chat the AI never sees, so the team can argue about the plan without the argument becoming the prompt.

The tools are compared in Multiplayer AI tools and Collaborative Claude Code tools, compared.

Who uses Poly?

Mixed groups of two to fifteen people where at least one person doesn't live in a terminal: cofounder pairs, a PM and an engineer speccing a feature, an agency building in front of a client, a dev team that wants the AI's work in a shared record. It works beyond code too: friends plan a trip in one shared AI chat while the AI builds the trip board.

Companies can add teams, team rooms and shared memory with Poly for Teams, which is invite-only. Book a demo.

What Poly is not

• Not a terminal. Nobody types into a shell. If your team wants a shared cloud terminal for the agent CLIs it already uses, see Poly vs AQ.
• Not self-hosted. Poly is hosted, and every turn runs in a sandbox on Poly's servers.
• Not multi-agent orchestration. Poly puts more people around one agent, not more agents around one person. The difference.
• Not an IDE. There is no editor to install. The timeline, the cards and the preview are the surface.

What does Poly cost?

Free to start: every account gets 50 credits of AI usage, with no card. Pro is $20 a month and Max $50 a month, for each person who runs the AI. Watching, chatting and approving are always free, and top-up packs start at $5. Pricing.

Who makes Poly?

Poly is built by Colorful Aura Inc. in New York, founded by Richard Kaminsky and Mitchell Lipyansky. You can book a first session with a founder or email support@usepoly.co.