Paperclip
Open-source Node.js and React app for organizing teams of AI agents around goals, tasks, and budgets.
- Stars
- 110k
- Forks
- 18.2k
- Licence
- MIT
- Language
- TypeScript
- Last update
- 4 days ago
- Type
- App
What it is
Paperclip is a Node.js server with a React dashboard that coordinates a team of AI agents to work toward business goals. You bring your own agents, assign goals, and track work and costs in one place. The README says it looks like a task manager but adds org charts, budgets, governance, and agent coordination underneath.
- Assign a business goal and have a CEO, CTO, and engineer agents break it into tasks
- Set budgets and monitor spending across different agent providers
- Review agent work through approval gates, diffs, screenshots, and tests
- Create reusable skills and templates for a team of agents
Great for
- Developers already running several AI coding agents who want one place to track them
- Small teams experimenting with autonomous agents that need budgets and approval steps
- People who want an audit trail of what each agent did and why
- Anyone comfortable self-hosting a Node.js app
Not ideal for
- People who want a finished hosted product with no setup; the README points to a Paperclip Cloud waitlist rather than a live service
- Users who need a simple single-agent chat tool, since this is built for coordinating multiple agents
- Teams without a plan for reviewing agent output, because the README stresses verification and oversight
How to get it
- 1
Clone and build from source
You'll need: Node.js · Git
Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip.git - 2
Run it
- Clone the repository and follow the Quickstart section of the README
- Open the Paperclip dashboard in your browser once the server is running
- Define a goal and add your agents to the org chart
- Set a budget and review the first agent output
- 3
Get the most out of it
- Connect the agent runtimes you already use, such as Claude Code or Codex, via the adapter overview in the docs
- Use goal alignment so agents receive context behind their tasks
- Use heartbeats to schedule agent wake-ups and routines
- Use skill versioning and evals to improve agents over time
Downloads
Strengths
- Works with many agent runtimes named in the README, including Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, and Gemini CLI
- Tracks tasks, costs, permissions, and run history in one dashboard
- MIT licensed and actively maintained, with a recent push in the repository metadata
Trade-offs
- The README is truncated and mostly marketing-oriented, so setup details are unclear from this text alone
- Many described features, like Cloud, SSO, and phone management, may depend on hosted or paid offerings not verified here
- Coordinating autonomous agents adds risk and requires careful permission and budget setup
How it compares
| Project | Stars | Type | Level | Updated | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| paperclip (this) | 110k | App | advanced | 4 days ago | Developers already running several AI coding agents who want one place to track them |
| crewAI | 60.4k | Library | intermediate | 4 days ago | Python developers prototyping multi-agent workflows |
| langgraph | 44.3k | Library | intermediate | 4 days ago | Python developers building multi-step AI agents that must survive failures or long waits |
| OpenHands | 92.5k | App | intermediate | 4 days ago | Developers who want coding agents running on a server while their laptop is off |
| agents | 42.1k | Dev tool | beginner | 4 days ago | Developers who already use one of the listed AI coding tools and want ready-made specialist agents |
| loop-engineering | 11.7k | Learning resource | intermediate | 4 days ago | Developers who already use AI coding agents and want recurring repo chores like issue triage or CI checks |
Stats synced from GitHub. The assessment above was drafted with AI from the project's README on 2026-10-29 and may miss recent changes — check the README before relying on a command. MIT licence: free to use, modify and distribute, including commercially, as long as you keep the copyright notice.