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Hatching

Hatching is Dex's onboarding process. It helps Dex learn enough about your company and each user to make cloud conversations practical, specific, and easy to act on.

Hatching is conversational. Dex may ask clarifying questions, confirm names or responsibilities, and capture preferences that make future answers more useful.

Company hatching​

Company hatching happens first. It builds shared organization context that applies across users, such as:

  • How your company describes teams, business units, environments, and workloads.
  • Which cloud accounts, projects, or subscriptions matter most.
  • How ownership is usually determined.
  • Which communication and ticketing tools should be used for follow-up.
  • How your organization prefers to describe cost optimization work.

Company hatching gives Dex the common language it needs before individual users start relying on it. For example, if your company calls a workload by an internal product name, Dex can use that language when explaining related assets or opportunities.

User hatching​

After company hatching, Dex can hatch each user individually. User hatching personalizes Dex for that person's role and responsibilities.

Dex may ask about:

  • The user's name or preferred short name.
  • Their role, team, and areas of responsibility.
  • Which systems, services, or cost centers they care about.
  • How they prefer to receive summaries and follow-ups.
  • Whether they usually own decisions, review recommendations, or route work to someone else.

This lets Dex tailor responses. A FinOps lead may want portfolio-level savings and prioritization. An engineering manager may want owner-ready summaries and risk context. An individual engineer may want the specific resource, expected impact, and implementation notes.

How hatching completes​

Hatching is complete when Dex has enough context to continue normal conversation. Dex may still refine what it knows over time as users ask questions, confirm assumptions, or correct details.

You do not need to complete every possible detail during hatching. Start with the essentials, then let Dex learn from normal work.

Updating context later​

Your organization changes: teams move, ownership shifts, services get renamed, and priorities change. You can keep Dex useful by correcting it in conversation.

Examples:

  • "That service is now owned by the platform team."
  • "Call this group Core Infrastructure going forward."
  • "For commitment recommendations, route the first review to FinOps."
  • "Use my short name in summaries."

When information is important for future work, make the correction explicit. Dex can then use that updated context in later conversations.

Good hatching answers​

During hatching, give concise but concrete answers. It is better to say "the payments team owns the checkout and billing accounts" than "engineering owns it." Specific ownership, names, and follow-up preferences help Dex route opportunities and summarize work more accurately.