> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.thread.app/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # How Thread works > The core concepts — guides, Motions, workflows, verification, and the Inbox — and how they fit together. Thread has a small set of load-bearing concepts. Once you have these, every surface in the product reads the same way. ## Guides do the work A **guide** is a resident agent you author in plain English: the outcome it's pursuing, what "done" means, the tone to take, how patient to be, and when to bring a human in. You give it channels (a texting number, an email identity on your domain, optionally a voice agent) and **tool rows** — scoped, read-only connections into systems like HubSpot, Jira, DocuSign, Slack, or your knowledge base. Then you **enroll** a customer. The guide opens the conversation itself and works the outcome over days or weeks: it wakes on a timer, on an inbound reply, or when you tap it awake; it remembers everything; and it escalates to your team when it's stuck. One guide, one account, one outcome. Start at [Guides](/guides/overview). ## Verification closes the loop A guide never declares victory on its own. An **outcome** closes only when: * the guide cites a **fresh read** from a connected source — your CRM, warehouse, or product data confirming the thing actually happened, or * a human on your team explicitly confirms it, when no read tool is attached. Progress is reported the same way, as a funnel derived from the guide's own log — **enrolled → reached → engaged → verifying → done** — never hand-authored. See [Outcomes and verification](/guides/outcomes-and-verification). ## Motions hold the program A **Motion** is a versioned, staged program for accounts that move through a lifecycle — kickoff, setup, go-live. Each stage owns **plays** (mostly agents that draft and do work) and **milestones**: plain-English customer outcomes confirmed either by an agent checking connected systems or by a human. Milestones marked *required* gate the stage advance, and the advance is always proposed to a person, never automatic. See [Motions](/motions/overview). Use a guide when one account needs one outcome pursued conversationally. Use a Motion when a population of accounts moves through the same staged program. They compose: Motions run agents as plays, and both report against the same verification standard. ## Workflows route A **workflow** reads an account's state — CRM fields, warehouse facts — and routes it down the right path: into the right Motion, the right stage, the right owner. Triggers fire from your CRM the moment a deal closes or a stage changes. See [Workflows](/workflows/overview). ## The Inbox is where humans decide Everything that needs a person lands in one place: approvals for outbound work, proposed phone calls, escalations with the whole story attached, customer replies, exceptions, and wins. You decide in place, and items resolve themselves when they're addressed elsewhere. Approvals can even go to people outside Thread via a secure link. See [Inbox](/inbox/overview). ## The floor is always on A set of rules is enforced in the runtime and never comes off: consent before the first text, quiet hours in the recipient's local time, STOP ends contact instantly across every guide, every dial clears the same gates no matter who approved it, the agent never verifies its own work, it pages your team when stuck, and every step lands in the log. Add your own rules on top. See [Compliance](/guides/compliance). ## Your customers see a concierge, not a console Customers get a white-labeled portal with passwordless sign-in: a plain-language summary of where they are, what your team is doing for them, what's needed from them, their documents, and a concierge chat. Operator vocabulary never reaches them. See [Customer portal](/customer-portal/overview). ## Next steps Publish a guide, enroll a customer, and watch it work. Build a staged program and assign your first account.