Pioneer has a few terms that are worth understanding before you go deep. This page explains them from the user’s point of view. It does not try to describe the internal architecture.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.getpioneer.dev/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Gateway
The gateway is the center of Pioneer. When something important happens, it usually happens in the gateway. It talks to model providers, stores Pioneer data, stores gateway secrets inkeystore.db, runs tools, manages skills and MCP servers, owns tasks, and streams results back to connected clients. You can run a gateway on the same computer as the desktop app, or on another machine.
A good rule: the gateway is where work happens. The desktop app is how you control it.
That rule matters because tools run on the gateway host. If the gateway is on your laptop, tools touch your laptop environment. If the gateway is on a server, tools touch the server environment.
Desktop App And Other Clients
The desktop app is the main Pioneer client today. It gives you the UI for gateway connections, the default workspace, threads, providers, skills, MCP servers, tasks, and settings. It can also start and manage a local gateway when you use Pioneer on one computer. Pioneer is not limited to the desktop app. The gateway exposes a protocol that other clients can use too. That means custom clients can be built on top of Pioneer, and mobile clients can connect to gateways in the same product model.Gateways And Workspaces
A gateway is the larger environment. A workspace is the container where your threads, skills, MCP servers, tasks, and settings come together. Use separate gateways when the execution environment should be different: different machine, different filesystem, different network, different accounts, or different security boundary. In the current desktop app, one workspace is created automatically when the app first starts. Creating and switching between multiple workspaces is not exposed yet. If you need practical separation today, create or connect separate gateways.Threads
A thread is a conversation inside a workspace. Use a new thread when you want fresh context. Keep one thread for a coding task, another for research, another for planning, and another for testing tools. Long threads can be useful, but they also accumulate assumptions. Starting a new one is often cleaner. Each thread has a timeline. The timeline shows messages, model output, tool calls, tool results, errors, retries, and final responses. When something surprises you, read the timeline before changing settings.Providers And Models
A provider is where models come from. Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, OpenRouter, Azure OpenAI, Bedrock, Ollama, and local OpenAI-compatible servers are all provider choices. A model is the specific model you choose for a thread or task. Models differ in speed, cost, context size, reasoning ability, and tool behavior. You can use one model for quick chats and another for more careful work. Provider credentials are configured on the gateway and stored in that gateway’s keystore. If you connect to a second gateway, it needs its own provider setup.Tools
Tools let agents do work outside plain text. Depending on what you enable, tools can read files, search directories, run shell commands, apply patches, fetch web pages, download URLs, call MCP tools, or use dynamic tools from skills. Start with read-only requests. After you trust the behavior, test write operations in a disposable folder before using them in important projects.Skills
Skills are installable capability packages. A skill can add instructions, workflows, checks, or dynamic tools that Pioneer can use later. Use skills when you want behavior that should be reusable instead of pasted into every prompt. A writing skill, a repository-review skill, or an internal workflow skill can make Pioneer behave more consistently across threads and tasks. Skills are controlled by the gateway and the current workspace, so the same desktop app can connect to different gateways with different skill sets.MCP Servers
MCP servers connect Pioneer to external tools and resources through Model Context Protocol. Think of MCP as a way to bring an existing system into the gateway: a database, a company API, a project management tool, a filesystem helper, or a SaaS integration. Once connected, the gateway can expose those MCP tools to agents according to the current gateway and workspace configuration. MCP install rows keep redacted configuration and secret refs. The actual secret values fromenv and headers live in the gateway keystore.