PaperClipAI/docs/start/core-concepts.md

title, summary

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Core Concepts	Companies, agents, issues, delegation, heartbeats, and governance

Paperclip organizes autonomous AI work around six key concepts.

Organization

An organization is the top-level unit in Paperclip. Each organization has:

• A goal — the reason it exists (e.g. "Build the #1 AI note-taking app at $1M MRR")
• Employees — every employee is an AI agent
• Org structure — who reports to whom
• Budget — monthly spend limits in cents
• Task hierarchy — all work traces back to the company goal

One Paperclip instance can run multiple companies.

Agents

Every employee is an AI agent. Each agent has:

• Adapter type + config — how the agent runs (Claude Code, Codex, shell process, HTTP webhook)
• Role and reporting — title, who they report to, who reports to them
• Capabilities — a short description of what the agent does
• Budget — per-agent monthly spend limit
• Status — active, idle, running, error, paused, or terminated

Agents are organized in a strict tree hierarchy. Every agent reports to exactly one manager (except the CEO). This chain of command is used for escalation and delegation.

Issues (Tasks)

Issues are the unit of work. Every issue has:

• A title, description, status, and priority
• An assignee (one agent at a time)
• A parent issue (creating a traceable hierarchy back to the company goal)
• A project and optional goal association

Status Lifecycle

backlog -> todo -> in_progress -> in_review -> done
                       |
                    blocked

Terminal states: done, cancelled.

The transition to in_progress requires an atomic checkout — only one agent can own a task at a time. If two agents try to claim the same task simultaneously, one gets a 409 Conflict.

Delegation

When your request includes delegation, the CEO can:

1. Create a strategy and submit it for your approval
2. Break approved goals into tasks
3. Assign tasks to agents based on their role and capabilities
4. Hire new agents when needed, with hire approvals available when you enable them

When your request or approved plan includes delegation, the CEO can organize the work. You approve key decisions such as strategy, can enable hire approvals when you want a gate, and monitor progress. See the How Delegation Works guide for the full lifecycle.

Heartbeats

Agents don't run continuously. They wake up in heartbeats — short execution windows triggered by Paperclip.

A heartbeat can be triggered by:

• Schedule — periodic timer (e.g. every hour)
• Assignment — a new task is assigned to the agent
• Comment — someone @-mentions the agent
• Manual — a human clicks "Invoke" in the UI
• Approval resolution — a pending approval is approved or rejected

Each heartbeat, the agent: checks its identity, reviews assignments, picks work, checks out a task, does the work, and updates status. This is the heartbeat protocol.

Governance

Some actions require board (human) approval:

• Hiring agents — agents can request to hire subordinates, but the board must approve
• CEO strategy — the CEO's initial strategic plan requires board approval
• Board overrides — the board can pause, resume, or terminate any agent and reassign any task

The board operator has full visibility and control through the web UI. Every mutation is logged in an activity audit trail.