Paperclip
Open-source orchestration platform that turns AI agents into a managed company — with org charts, budgets, and governance
⚡ TL;DR
🎯 The Problem It Solves
Managing 20+ AI agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, Cursor) means losing track of who's doing what, runaway token costs with no guardrails, and no persistent context across sessions. Paperclip solves this by giving you a full control plane: hire agents into an org chart, assign goals tied to company mission, set hard budgets that auto-throttle overspend, and track every decision through an immutable audit log. It's the difference between babysitting a pile of scripts and running an actual autonomous business.
🔧 How It Works
Paperclip is a Node.js server with an embedded PostgreSQL database and a React UI. You define companies, each with an org chart of agents (any runtime that accepts a heartbeat — Claude Code, Codex, OpenClaw, Cursor, bash scripts, HTTP webhooks). Agents are assigned goals that cascade down from company mission. On scheduled heartbeats, agents wake up, check out tasks atomically (no double-work), execute within their budget, and report back. The dashboard shows real-time status, cost tracking per agent/project/goal, and full audit trails. Multi-company isolation means one deployment can run entirely separate businesses with their own data, agents, and budgets.
🖼️ Screenshots
🚀 Installation & Quick Start
Installation
# Quickest start (one command)\nnpx paperclipai onboard --yes\n\n# Or clone and run manually:\ngit clone https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip.git\ncd paperclip\npnpm install\npnpm devQuick Start
- npx paperclipai onboard --yes
- Open http://localhost:3100
- Create your first company and define a goal
- Hire an agent (Claude Code, Codex, or any heartbeat-compatible runtime)
- Set a budget and hit run — monitor from the dashboard
✅ Pros
- •Turns chaotic agent sprawl into a structured, auditable org
- •Genuine cost control with hard budget stops (no runaway spend)
- •Persistent agent state across heartbeats — no context loss
- •One-command setup with embedded Postgres — zero infra needed
- •73k+ stars, extremely active development
- •MIT licensed — fully open-source
- •Multi-company support out of the box
❌ Cons
- •Overkill for single-agent use cases
- •Requires Node.js/pnpm ecosystem
- •Self-hosted only (no managed cloud yet — on roadmap)
- •Learning curve for org-chart and governance concepts
- •No desktop app yet (on roadmap)
💬 Practitioner Verdict
"Paperclip is the missing management layer for the AI agent economy. If you're running more than a handful of agents — or want to build an autonomous business powered by AI — it turns chaos into a structured, governable, budget-controlled operation. The 73k+ star community and rapid development pace make it the clear leader in agent orchestration."
📊 Specifications
- Language
- TypeScript
- License
- MIT
- Platform
- Linux, macOS, Windows, Cloud, Docker
- Kill Chain
- None
💰 Pricing Reality
Paperclip is completely free and open-source (MIT). Self-hosted, no Paperclip account required. A managed cloud version is on the roadmap but not yet available.