Repo Year in Review

paperclipai/paperclip

Open-source Node.js server and React UI for orchestrating teams of AI agents with org charts, budgets, governance, tasks and routines from one dashboard.

  • 99.2k GitHub stars
  • TypeScript
  • ⚖️ MIT
View on GitHub (opens in a new tab) Setup guide
npx paperclipai@latest onboard --yes
paperclipai/paperclip preview image

What it is

Paperclip is a self-hosted Node.js server and React UI that orchestrates a team of AI agents to run a business. You bring your own agents (e.g. OpenClaw, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI), assign goals, and track work and costs from one dashboard. It looks like a task manager but adds org charts, budgets, governance, goal alignment and agent coordination.

Who it's for

  • People coordinating many different agents toward a common goal who lose track of many simultaneous terminals
  • Teams that want agents running autonomously 24/7 while keeping audit and approval control
  • Users who need to monitor costs and enforce budgets across agents
  • Operators who want to manage autonomous businesses from a phone

Requirements

Requirements

  • Node.js 24.11 or newer
  • Provider API key (e.g. ANTHROPIC_API_KEY, OPENAI_API_KEY, OPENROUTER_API_KEY) for the test-drive examples

Setup

  1. Install and onboard

    With Node.js 24.11 or newer installed, run the onboarding CLI. It runs from npm's cache; instance configuration and data persist locally.

    bash
    npx paperclipai@latest onboard --yes

  2. Try an isolated test instance

    test-drive creates an isolated manual test instance already initialized with a CEO agent. It stays in the foreground, never installs a service or creates a first task, and opens the browser only after setup succeeds.

    bash
    ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=... npx paperclipai test-drive

Examples

Test drive with Codex harness

bash
bash
OPENAI_API_KEY=... npx paperclipai test-drive --harness codex

What it does: Starts an isolated test instance using the codex harness with an OpenAI key.

Test drive with OpenCode and OpenRouter

bash
bash
OPENROUTER_API_KEY=... npx paperclipai test-drive \
  --harness opencode \
  --model openrouter/anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

What it does: Selects the opencode harness and a specific model routed through OpenRouter.

Define a company goal

Prompt
prompt
Build the #1 AI note-taking app to $1M MRR.

Expected output: The README's example of step 01 (define the goal), followed by hiring a team and approving/running from the dashboard.

Pros & cons

Pros

  • Pro:Supports many agent runtimes (OpenClaw, Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, etc.) plus custom processes, HTTP endpoints and external adapters
  • Pro:Built-in budgets with threshold alerts and hard stops, plus governance, approval gates and revisioned config with rollback
  • Pro:Atomic task checkout and persistent task context, comments and documents prevent duplicate work and lost state
  • Pro:Self-hosted, open source (MIT badge), no Paperclip account required

Cons

  • Con:Budget enforcement uses recorded spend, so usage reporting and in-flight work can delay a stop
  • Con:Agent Chat and chat/email connectors are experimental and require enabling instance settings
  • Con:Exported company packages need review before sharing since plain environment values and local paths can remain

Images

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paperclipai/paperclip preview image · paperclipai/paperclip on GitHub · MIT
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