12 KiB
The control plane for autonomous AI companies.
Open-source orchestration to manage teams of AI agents.
Hire AI employees, set goals, automate jobs — your business runs itself.
Quickstart · Docs · GitHub · Discord
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What is Paperclip?
If OpenClaw is an employee, Paperclip is the company
Paperclip is a Node.js server and React UI that orchestrates a team of AI agents to run a business. Bring your own agents, assign goals, and track your agents' work and costs from one dashboard.
It looks like a task manager — but under the hood it has org charts, budgets, governance, goal alignment, and agent coordination.
Three steps to an autonomous company:
| Step | Example | |
|---|---|---|
| 01 | Define the goal | "Build the #1 AI note-taking app to $1M MRR." |
| 02 | Hire the team | CEO, CTO, engineers, designers, marketers — any bot, any provider. |
| 03 | Approve and run | Review strategy. Set budgets. Hit go. Monitor from the dashboard. |
COMING SOON: Clipmart — Download and run entire companies with one click. Browse pre-built company templates — full org structures, agent configs, and skills — and import them into your Paperclip instance in seconds.
| Works with |
 OpenClaw |
 Claude Code |
 Codex |
 Cursor |
 Bash |
 HTTP |
If it can receive a heartbeat, it's hired.
Paperclip is right for you if
- You want to build autonomous AI companies
- You coordinate many different agents (OpenClaw, Codex, Claude, Cursor) toward a common goal
- You have 20 simultaneous Claude Code terminals open and lose track of what everyone is doing
- You want agents running autonomously 24/7, but still want to audit work and chime in when needed
- You want to monitor costs and enforce budgets
- You want a process for managing agents that feels like using a task manager
- You want to manage your autonomous businesses from your phone
Features
Bring Your Own Agent
Your Claude, Cursor, Codex, and OpenClaw — organized under one org structure, pointed at one goal. If it can receive a heartbeat, it's hired.
Goal Alignment
Every piece of work traces back to the company mission. Your agents know what to do and why.
Company Mission → Project Goal → Agent Goal → Task
Heartbeats
Agents wake up on a schedule, check their work, and act. Delegation flows up and down the org chart. Ticket assignments wake agents. Cross-team requests delegate to the best agent for the job.
Cost Control
Every agent gets a monthly budget. When they hit it, they stop. No runaway costs. No surprise bills. Track costs per agent, per task, per project, per goal.
Multi-Company
One deployment. Many companies. Run one AI company or fifty with complete data isolation. One control plane for your entire portfolio.
Ticket System
Every conversation traced. Every decision explained. Structured tickets with clear owners, full tool-call tracing, and an immutable audit log. Nothing happens in the dark.
Governance
You're the board. Approve hires. Approve strategy. Override anything. Agents can't hire new agents or execute strategies without your sign-off. Pause, resume, reassign, terminate — at any time.
What Paperclip is not
| Not a chatbot. | Agents have jobs, not chat windows. |
| Not an agent framework. | We don't tell you how to build agents. We tell you how to run a company made of them. |
| Not a workflow builder. | No drag-and-drop pipelines. Paperclip models companies — with org charts, goals, budgets, and governance. |
| Not a prompt manager. | Agents bring their own prompts, models, and runtimes. Paperclip manages the organization they work in. |
| Not a single-agent tool. | This is for teams. If you have one agent, you probably don't need Paperclip. If you have twenty — you definitely do. |
Quickstart
Open source. Self-hosted. No Paperclip account required.
npx paperclip onboard
Or manually:
git clone https://github.com/paperclip-dev/paperclip.git
cd paperclip
pnpm install
pnpm dev
This starts the API server at http://localhost:3100 and the UI at http://localhost:5173. An embedded PostgreSQL database is created automatically — no setup required.
With Docker
docker compose up --build
Requirements: Node.js 20+, pnpm 9.15+
Architecture
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ You (the board) │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Paperclip (control plane) │
│ │
│ Dashboard · Org Chart · Tasks · Goals · Budgets │
│ Approvals · Activity Log · Cost Tracking │
├──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┤
│ Adapters │
│ │
│ Claude · OpenClaw · Codex · Cursor · HTTP │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Paperclip is the control plane, not the execution plane. Agents run wherever they run and phone home. Adapters connect Paperclip to any execution environment.
Stack: TypeScript · Express · React 19 · PostgreSQL · Drizzle ORM · TailwindCSS
FAQ
How is Paperclip different from agents like OpenClaw or Claude Code? Paperclip uses those agents. It orchestrates them into a company — with org charts, budgets, goals, governance, and accountability.
Can I use my existing agents? Yes. Paperclip is unopinionated about agent runtimes. Your agents can be Claude Code sessions, OpenClaw bots, Python scripts, shell commands, HTTP webhooks — anything that can receive a heartbeat signal. Adapters connect Paperclip to whatever execution environment you use.
What happens when an agent hits its budget limit? The agent auto-pauses and new tasks are blocked. You get a soft warning at 80%. As the board, you can override the limit at any time.
Do agents run continuously? By default, agents run on scheduled heartbeats and event-based triggers (task assignment, @-mentions). You can also hook in continuous agents like OpenClaw.
Can I run multiple companies? Yes. A single deployment can run dozens of companies with complete data isolation. Useful for separate ventures, testing strategies in parallel, or templating org configs for reuse.
What does a typical setup look like? Locally, a single Node.js process manages an embedded Postgres and local file storage. For production, point it at your own Postgres and deploy however you like. Configure projects, agents, and goals — the agents take care of the rest.
Comparison
| Paperclip | Agent frameworks (LangChain, CrewAI) | Single-agent tools (Claude Code, Cursor) | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Partial | No |
| Org structure & hierarchy | Yes | No | No |
| Cost control & budgets | Yes | No | No |
| Goal alignment | Yes | No | No |
| Governance & approvals | Yes | No | No |
| Multi-company | Yes | No | No |
| Agent-agnostic | Yes | Framework-locked | Single provider |
| Ticket-based work tracking | Yes | No | No |
Development
pnpm dev # Full dev (API + UI)
pnpm dev:server # Server only
pnpm dev:ui # UI only
pnpm build # Build all
pnpm typecheck # Type checking
pnpm test:run # Run tests
pnpm db:generate # Generate DB migration
pnpm db:migrate # Apply migrations
See doc/DEVELOPING.md for the full development guide.
Contributing
We welcome contributions. See the contributing guide for details.
Community
- Discord — chat, questions, show & tell
- GitHub Issues — bugs and feature requests
- GitHub Discussions — ideas and RFC
License
MIT © 2026 Paperclip
Open source under MIT. Built for people who want to run companies, not babysit agents.