DottaandPaperclip
1aa3a21ac4
## Thinking Path > - Paperclip is the open source app people use to manage AI agents for work. > - Chat users receive a notice when accepted input waits for execution. > - Periodic publication maintenance scans those receipts even when nothing changes. > - Admission, cancellation, source removal, and authority changes already define when a notice can change. > - Existing action, receipt, publication, and provider-link rows preserve that work across restart. > - This PR gives ordinary inbound queue notices a commit-driven owner using the shared scheduler. > - Settled notices stop querying while unfinished batches and contention retain recovery. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description This ordinary inbound-notice slice follows merged #17895 and now targets master. Related extraction: #16187. Failed-run retry notice projection remains a separate following slice (#17649); its two shared receipt-writer notifications move forward here because ordinary input can attach to those receipt owners. **What happened?** Publication maintenance scans accepted input to project queued, not-started, and removed-source notices. Empty scans keep touching the database. Its cursor also loses PostgreSQL timestamp precision, so a full page of suppressed candidates can repeat. **Expected behavior** Committed changes should wake the notice owner. The worker should reconstruct saved candidates after restart and stop scanning when settled. It must retain a wake across drain, failed selection, contention, and a commit during reconciliation. **Steps to reproduce** Start an otherwise idle instance with chat history. Observe the ordinary inbound notice scan in periodic publication maintenance. For the cursor defect, retain a full page of denied candidates with microsecond timestamps before an eligible notice. ## What Changed - Register an ordinary inbound-notice owner with the existing delivery coordinator and scheduler. Bound each pass to 100 candidates, preserve precise continuation cursors and earlier-page contention, and reset scoped discovery after committed changes. - Notify from real admission, failed action settlement, source removal, task/tree/agent/budget/company cancellation, signed Slack Stop, and deferred queue cancellation/failure. Preserve pending-status and absent-run guards so concurrent promotion wins. - Cover task privacy/grants, project membership/visibility and current authority through their persistence owners. Keep receipt ownership, current authorization, provider policy and closed notice text in the existing chat service. - Cover shared retry-owned receipts through the existing durable authorization callback and a notifying transaction around conditional denial retirement. These small producer fixes already exist in #17649; no per-caller recovery wrappers are added. Retain its matching budget-refusal fixture correction. - Remove only ordinary notices from periodic maintenance. Preserve the separate failed-retry pass at 50 and keep the explicit combined manual API. - Preserve timestamp precision, fairness, restart, drain/resume, rollback and quiet behavior. Add two real producer transaction regressions and update the audit. Add no storage or scheduler infrastructure. ## Verification Current publication head: `41f7e2c9e351efa6cfa5ef699c0e69df7425012b`, after normal merge of master `d30c8f42b842327ee1c18c41a2efd6ba623da5cd` (#17960). The integration preserves both complete added/removed patches, all non-overlap upstream blobs/deletions, and task-before-comment lock order before the notice source lock/intent. Full binary identity is not claimed for the overlapping files. The final follow-up changes acceptance documentation only. - **202 distinct combined-master cases pass on `1720b685d9d5fb9cb4377223fdaa0a9fae2aff9c`:** 148 across the real PostgreSQL receipt concurrency and two comment route suites, plus 54 notice/FIFO/producer cases (1,598 skipped). Current server typechecking/build and module boundaries pass; all 21 owned source/test hashes are unchanged after the documentation follow-up. - The earlier CI voice-reconstruction quiet assertion failed once after 105 fetches. All 15 voice lifecycle cases pass unchanged locally; no assertions or production code were relaxed and no CI retry was used. The original failure remains in the audit, and current-head full CI must pass. - **Earlier restoration repair (head `28c898e93504318056d7a6ab2bbc5eafa6b639ae`): 126 distinct selected cases pass (54 ordinary-notice/producer cases with 1,598 skipped, plus 72 separate Retry/budget cases with 1,580 skipped).** Fix the blocking [restored input stays silent](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/pull/17647#discussion_r4404007181) finding. A failed Retry's earlier receipt wake can drain before `releaseUnadmittedTaskRetryInput` restores ordinary receipts in a later transaction. The restoring transaction now awaits the existing company/task notification before its guarded write. - The new causal regression builds a durable unadmitted failed-Retry owner, uses the real input-claim owner, consumes an earlier committed wake, and proves two minutes of worker quiet with no notice. The real release transaction then restores the ordinary row, emits intent/commit settlement, and reactivates the coordinator to create its queued notice. It fails before the hook with the restored row visible but no intent. This is real PostgreSQL producer/consumer boundary proof with seeded Retry-refusal state; the separate compatibility selection exercises existing supported GitHub Retry flows. It is not a claimed complete public-request failure walkthrough. - **Earlier discovery-repair acceptance (revision `4a713edfa06b9d3dcc0e81e900006fbdb973b2d9`): 267 distinct selected cases pass:** 142 complete cancellation/app/admission consumer cases, 53 ordinary-notice cases, and 72 separate retry/budget cases. The selections skip 1,598 and 1,579 other cases. The final master integration leaves this complete patch byte-identical; the new master paths concern provider workspace/session reuse and E2E reports. - Fix the valid P2 [discovery rereads denied history](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/pull/17647#discussion_r4386889825), despite the previous head's 5/5 summary. Task hints now need zero discovery SQL; company/startup discovery returns DISTINCT company/task identifiers with one query. Bounded projection still checks current authority and candidates. Three real database regressions with 250 denied actions and a second company fail before the fix and pass afterward, checking actual query and returned-row counts. Broad SQL may still inspect candidate history; no constant database-cost claim is made. - Both new producer tests fail before their fixes and pass afterward. One observes intent before a callback-owned receipt write and settlement after outer commit. The other uses real heartbeat admission/recovery and a PostgreSQL row lock to prove exact company/task intent exists before conditional denial retirement; the outside connection still sees deferred status until commit. - The reader can select a retry-owned deferred receipt for later ordinary input, and receipt resolution follows its owner. Disabling coalescing on the retry's own request does not exclude that later path. The two transferred notifications close the actual writer gaps; current authorization remains enforced by existing consumers. This is producer/transaction proof, not a claimed complete mixed-ingress walkthrough. - The moved callback exposes an old test mock that authorized against the root DB. The existing #17649 fixture correction authorizes and writes in one transaction; original requester, comment, skipped-status and budget assertions remain. Both the initial invalid lock fixture and the corrected missing-intent failures are preserved in the audit. - Updated shared dependency build, server typechecking/build and module-boundary checks pass. Because master also changed agent configuration, upgrade admission and runner contracts, the same 264 cases were rerun on combined revision `875a6ee8d211cba7f0499aace7fcea7f6880c4a2` with new isolated databases. Repeated checks are not 528 different tests. Tests under `src/__tests__` were executed separately from production typechecking. - [Current acceptance and preserved failure ledger](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/blob/41f7e2c9e351efa6cfa5ef699c0e69df7425012b/doc/plans/2026-10-25-inbound-wake-notices-sleep-audit.md#shared-retry-receipt-producer-gap-resolved-october-28) records current scope, exact commands, actual fixtures, source hashes and remaining limits. Earlier baseline/full-suite counts retain their original revision scope. - Server typechecking/build and module boundaries pass after the current restoration hook. The earlier combined-master compilation at `661f2f6da8c6c22cdcc25edccd57502ee6fa8c4b` retains its original scope. - **Current exact-head CI is green and Greptile is 5/5.** The old head's review error is not a pass. No full local repository matrix, live provider tenant, external alarm, physical suspension or savings claim is made. Following notice duties retain their separate owners. ### Final merge verification - Reviewed PR head remains `41f7e2c9e351efa6cfa5ef699c0e69df7425012b`: exact-head Greptile 5/5, all 55 check contexts clean, no unresolved review threads, and no Ponytail verdict present. - One Runner shard initially failed descriptor suspension and a five-second OpenCode fixture deadline. The same package passed on the preceding head. The first local attempt was invalid because required Rust fixture binaries were absent; after building them, all eight relevant cases pass with unchanged timeouts. One failed-job retry then passes 1,956 cases (four skipped). No source/assertion/time-budget change or second CI retry was used. - Current master `0e365768f032a472807b5720da8431f92d2f07ce` adds manual monitor and task-drain fixes. Its routes file overlaps but merges cleanly. Local normal-merge validation commit `2720b79c769cb609ad4d392512331e67b910ff3f` preserves both complete added/removed patches and every unrelated master blob/deletion. This is not raw binary identity for overlapping files. - **156 distinct cases pass on that exact combined tree:** all 102 monitor/drain/policy cases plus 54 notice cases (1,598 skipped). Types and build pass. An initial competing-cold-check run failed setup hooks (38 passed, two hook failures, 62 skipped); the same four suites pass alone with all original hook/test timeouts and assertions intact. The failed run remains recorded, not counted as full acceptance. - This merge proof changes no published source or review head. The protected pinned-head merge guard recomputes both patches and requires the exact tested master/tree/head, successful validation receipts and unchanged live merge gates. Previous acceptance counts retain their original revision scope; no local full-repository or deployed-sleep claim is made. Master then advanced to `75754ffb7af2b7ee7dce1e915a145faa82a8fb2a` with #17976 (five UI/e2e/map files only). The entire `server` and `packages` trees are identical to the validated composition. Both complete patches and all newly landed UI files are preserved in the final clean merge tree; the protected gate checks these exact source-root hashes and changed paths. No additional UI-test result is claimed. ## Risks - Missing a supported producer could delay a notice until restart. Tests cover real service and API producers; durable rows remain authoritative. Notifications cover supported application writers in the owning process, not arbitrary external SQL writers. - Privacy invalidation can affect descendants, so those changes use company scope. Ordinary admission and publication changes use task scope. Settled history causes no recurring scan. - Provider output remains subject to current authority and receipt ownership. A cancelled request without a visible queued notice does not acquire a new failure message. - This establishes worker quiet, not host or database suspension. Cloud alarms and conservative sleep gates do not change. Other maintenance remains in place. - Remaining stacked slices still need their own integration, review, and CI. This slice merges only under the user’s explicit campaign authorization after current-head gates pass. ## Model Used OpenAI Codex, GPT-6 family, with repository inspection and code execution tools. The exact serving variant and context-window size are not exposed in this session. ## Checklist - [x] I have included a thinking path that traces from project context to this change - [x] I have specified the model used (with version and capability details) - [x] I have checked ROADMAP.md and confirmed this PR does not duplicate planned core work - [x] I have searched GitHub for duplicate or related PRs and linked them above - [x] I have either (a) linked existing issues with `Fixes: #` / `Closes #` / `Refs #` OR (b) described the issue in-PR following the relevant issue template - [x] I have not referenced internal/instance-local Paperclip issues or links (only public GitHub `#NNN` / `github.com/paperclipai/paperclip` URLs) - [x] My branch name describes the change (e.g. `docs/...`, `fix/...`) and contains no internal Paperclip ticket id or instance-derived details - [x] I have run tests locally and they pass - [x] I have added or updated tests where applicable - [x] I have updated relevant documentation to reflect my changes - [x] I have considered and documented any risks above - [x] All Paperclip CI gates are green - [x] Greptile is 5/5 with no open P2s, recommendations, or follow-ups - [x] I will address all Greptile and reviewer comments before requesting merge --------- Co-authored-by: Paperclip <noreply@paperclip.ing>
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Paperclip is the app people use to manage AI agents for work.
Open-source orchestration for teams of AI agents.
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 work and costs from one dashboard. Choose models and harnesses per agent while keeping your team's tasks, skills, permissions, and history in one place.
It looks like a task manager. Under the hood: org charts, budgets, governance, goal alignment, and agent coordination.
Manage business goals, not pull requests.
| 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. |
| Works with |
 OpenClaw |
 Claude Code |
 Codex |
 Cursor + Cloud |
 Gemini CLI |
 OpenCode |
 Pi |
 Hermes + Gateway |
 Grok Build |
 Kimi Code |
If it can receive a heartbeat, it's hired.
Custom processes, HTTP endpoints, and external adapter packages extend the roster. See the adapter overview for setup and capabilities.
Paperclip is right for you if
- ✅ You want to build autonomous AI organizations
- ✅ 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
The four pillars
Four things have to work for an organization of AI agents to actually produce: the tasks, the org, the training, and the infrastructure. Paperclip is built around exactly those four pillars.
| Pillar | Built for | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Agentic Task Manager — Declare intent. Agents work. You verify the output. | Everyone, daily | Tasks, approvals & review gates · proactive agent coworkers · auditable routines & workflows · verify from diffs, screenshots & tests |
| Org Chart for Agents — Roles, permissions & boundaries for humans and agents. | Managers | Mixed human + agent org chart · responsibilities, delegation, specialization · governance: who can do what · scoped secrets & company boundaries · connection permissions & responsible-user identities |
| Agent Employee Training — Design, train & evaluate your AI employees. | Enablers | Skill Studio & shared org-wide skills · evals & saved test runs · active learning loops & quality metrics · performance reviews for agents · saved test inputs · skill version history & restore · reusable team templates |
| Agentic OS — The infrastructure that makes the work run. | IT & platform | Cross-provider runtime: any model, any agent · sandboxing, integrations & MCP servers · SSO, GRC, RBAC & cost controls · data privacy, internal trace collection, compounding data value · personal & shared app connections · run history & opt-in tracing |
Features
🔌 Bring Your Own AgentAny agent, any runtime, one org chart. If it can receive a heartbeat, it's hired. |
🎯 Goal AlignmentLink tasks and projects to your organization goals. Agents receive the goal context behind their work. |
💓 HeartbeatsAgents wake for assigned work, follow-up messages, or configured schedules. Delegation flows up and down the org chart. |
💰 Cost ControlCompany, agent, and project budgets. Track reported spend, get threshold alerts, and pause work at configured limits. |
🏢 Multi-OrganizationOne deployment, many organizations. Separate tasks, agents, permissions, and activity histories for each. |
🎫 Task ThreadsKeep conversations, plans, blockers, files, and run history attached to the work. Assign tasks to agents or people. |
🛡️ GovernanceConfigure review and approval stages, approve hires, and pause, reassign, or stop work when needed. |
📊 Org ChartHierarchies, roles, reporting lines. Your agents have a boss, a title, and a job description. |
📱 Mobile ReadyMonitor and manage your autonomous businesses from anywhere. |
🔗 Apps & ConnectionsConnect services such as GitHub, Notion, and Railway, or your own MCP server. Set gateway actions to Allowed, Ask first, or Off. |
👥 Shared Agents, Personal AccountsChoose who can use a connection and which agents can access it. Managed GitHub operations can use the account of the person directing the work. |
🧠 Skills & Skill StudioInstall or write shared skills, test them with saved inputs, inspect results, and restore earlier versions. |
📅 Scheduled RoutinesRun recurring work on a schedule or trigger it through an API or webhook. Each run has a task, an owner, and a history. |
📎 Artifacts & FeedbackFind the files and documents agents produce. Preview supported formats and leave comments on specific passages in documents. |
📦 Ready-Made TeamsPreview and install teams with roles, skills, projects, and routines. Choose their runtimes and make the setup your own. |
Experimental Agent Chat and chat/email connectors add conversations with agents in Paperclip and through configured services such as Slack, Discord, Telegram, and AgentMail. Enable the relevant instance settings to try them.
Problems Paperclip solves
| Without Paperclip | With Paperclip |
|---|---|
| ❌ You have 20 Claude Code tabs open and can't track which one does what. On reboot you lose everything. | ✅ Tasks are ticket-based, conversations are threaded, sessions persist across reboots. |
| ❌ You manually gather context from several places to remind your bot what you're actually doing. | ✅ Context flows from the task up through the project and company goals — your agent always knows what to do and why. |
| ❌ Folders of agent configs are disorganized and you're re-inventing task management, communication, and coordination between agents. | ✅ Paperclip gives you org charts, ticketing, delegation, and governance out of the box — so you run a company, not a pile of scripts. |
| ❌ Runaway loops waste hundreds of dollars of tokens and max your quota before you even know what happened. | ✅ Spend tracking, budget alerts, and automatic pauses help you control the cost of ongoing work. |
| ❌ You have recurring jobs (customer support, social, reports) and have to remember to manually kick them off. | ✅ Routines create assigned tasks on a schedule, with outputs and run history you can inspect. |
| ❌ You have an idea, you have to find your repo, fire up Claude Code, keep a tab open, and babysit it. | ✅ Add a task in Paperclip. Your coding agent works on it until it's done. Management reviews their work. |
Why Paperclip is special
Paperclip handles the hard orchestration details correctly.
| Atomic task checkout. | A single assignee and execution locks prevent competing runs from claiming the same task. |
| Persistent work context. | Tasks, comments, and documents stay in Paperclip. Supporting adapters resume saved sessions across runs. |
| Runtime skill injection. | Agents can learn Paperclip workflows and project context at runtime, without retraining. |
| Governance with rollback. | Approval gates are enforced, config changes are revisioned, and bad changes can be rolled back safely. |
| Accountable connections. | Human access, agent eligibility, and gateway action permissions are separate controls. Approve a call once or save a revocable rule. |
| Goal-aware execution. | Linked tasks and projects carry goal ancestry so agents see the "why," not just a title. |
| Portable company templates. | Export/import orgs, agents, and skills with secret scrubbing and collision handling. |
| Organization boundaries. | Company-scoped access checks keep each organization's work, agents, and activity separate within one deployment. |
What's Under the Hood
Paperclip is a full control plane, not a wrapper. Before you build any of this yourself, know that it already exists:
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ PAPERCLIP SERVER │
│ │
│ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │
│ │Identity & │ │ Work & │ │ Heartbeat │ │Governance │ │
│ │ Access │ │ Tasks │ │ Execution │ │& Approvals│ │
│ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ │
│ │
│ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │
│ │ Org Chart │ │Workspaces │ │ Plugins │ │ Budget │ │
│ │ & Agents │ │ & Runtime │ │ │ │ & Costs │ │
│ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ │
│ │
│ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ ┌───────────┐ │
│ │ Routines │ │ Secrets & │ │ Activity │ │ Company │ │
│ │& Schedules│ │ Storage │ │ & Events │ │Portability│ │
│ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
▲ ▲ ▲ ▲
┌─────┴─────┐ ┌─────┴─────┐ ┌─────┴─────┐ ┌─────┴─────┐
│ Claude │ │ Codex │ │ CLI │ │ HTTP/web │
│ Code │ │ │ │ agents │ │ bots │
└───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘ └───────────┘
The Systems
|
Identity & Access — Two deployment modes (trusted local or authenticated), human roles and permissions, agent API keys, short-lived run JWTs, company memberships, and invite flows. Responsible-user attribution follows work through delegation and supported managed connections. |
Org Chart & Agents — Agents have roles, titles, reporting lines, permissions, and budgets. Adapter examples match the diagram: Claude Code, Codex, CLI agents such as Cursor/Gemini/bash, HTTP/webhook bots such as OpenClaw, and external adapter plugins. If it can receive a heartbeat, it's hired. |
|
Work & Task System — Issues carry company/project/goal/parent links, atomic checkout with execution locks, first-class blocker dependencies, comments, documents, attachments, work products, labels, and inbox state. Search across work, review document revisions, and leave anchored feedback. |
Heartbeat Execution — DB-backed wakeup queue with coalescing, budget checks, workspace resolution, secret injection, skill loading, and adapter invocation. Runs produce logs, usage records, and adapter-specific session state. Bounded recovery handles supported failures and surfaces cases that need human action. |
|
Workspaces & Runtime — Project repositories and workspaces, optional isolated execution workspaces (git worktrees, operator branches), and runtime services (dev servers, preview URLs). Sandbox providers extend execution beyond the local host; availability depends on the configured environment and adapter. |
Governance & Approvals — Board approval workflows, execution policies with review/approval stages, decision tracking, budget hard-stops, and agent pause/resume/terminate. Configured task reviews govern completion; connection action approvals govern calls through the tool gateway. |
|
Budget & Cost Control — Token and cost tracking by company, agent, project, goal, issue, provider, and model. Scoped budget policies with warning thresholds and hard stops. Enforcement uses recorded spend; usage reporting and in-flight work can delay a stop. |
Routines & Schedules — Recurring tasks with cron, webhook, and API triggers. Concurrency and catch-up policies. Each routine execution creates a tracked issue and wakes the assigned agent — no manual kick-offs needed. |
|
Plugins — Instance-wide plugin system with out-of-process workers, capability-gated host services, job scheduling, tool exposure, and UI contributions. Extend Paperclip without forking it. |
Secrets & Storage — Company secrets and per-person secret values, encrypted credential storage, local or S3-compatible file storage, attachments, and work products. Secret references supply credentials to authorized runs without copying values into ordinary agent configuration. |
|
Activity & Events — Mutating actions, heartbeat state changes, cost events, approvals, comments, and work products are recorded as durable activity so operators can audit what happened and why. |
Company Portability — Preview, export, and import organization packages with agents, skills, and optional projects, routines, tasks, and attachments. Referenced secret values are omitted; review packages before sharing because plain environment values and local paths can remain. Packages share an operating setup; full-instance recovery uses backups. |
What Paperclip is not
| Not just a chatbot. | Conversations stay attached to tasks, plans, decisions, and outputs. Experimental Agent Chat can hand work off to assigned tasks. |
| 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 just a workflow builder. | Routines operate within an organization, with roles, goals, budgets, and governance. |
| Not a prompt manager. | Agents bring their own prompts, models, and runtimes. Paperclip manages the organization they work in. |
| Not limited to one agent. | Start with one agent and grow into a team with shared skills, delegation, and review. |
| Not only for code review. | Coding and PR review fit alongside research, operations, content, and other work. |
Quickstart
Open source. Self-hosted. No Paperclip account required. Follow the guided quickstart to set up your first agent.
Just ask your agent to install Paperclip
Share the installation guide with your agent.
Or install it yourself
With Node.js 24.11 or newer installed:
npx paperclipai@latest onboard --yes
The CLI runs from npm's cache; your instance configuration and data persist locally.
See the installation guide for managed installs, pinned versions, canary and git-ref installs, updates, rollback, service management, and uninstalling.
For an isolated manual test instance that is already initialized with a CEO
agent, use test-drive. It stays in the foreground, never installs a service
or creates a first task, and opens the browser only after setup succeeds:
ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=... npx paperclipai test-drive
OPENAI_API_KEY=... npx paperclipai test-drive --harness codex
OPENROUTER_API_KEY=... npx paperclipai test-drive \
--harness opencode \
--model openrouter/anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5
Each run without --data-dir gets a unique, retained temporary directory; its
absolute path is printed at startup. Pass --data-dir to reuse one, or
--no-browser to leave the initialized instance unopened. When invoked from a
linked Git worktree, test-drive also enables task execution in that worktree.
See the test-drive guide for credential and
reuse behavior.
Troubleshooting: private npm registry
.npmrcIf this fails with an
E404forpaperclipai(or similar) and you use a private npm registry (for example GitHub Packages) via a global~/.npmrc,npxmay be resolvingpaperclipaiagainst that private registry instead of the public npm registry.Diagnostic:
npm config get registryWorkaround (cross-platform; force the public npm registry for this command):
npx --registry https://registry.npmjs.org paperclipai@latest onboard --yes
That quickstart path now defaults to trusted local loopback mode for the fastest first run. To start in authenticated/private mode instead, choose a bind preset explicitly:
npx paperclipai@latest onboard --yes --bind lan
# or:
npx paperclipai@latest onboard --yes --bind tailnet
If you already have Paperclip configured, rerunning onboard keeps the existing config in place. Use npx paperclipai configure to edit settings.
Or manually:
git clone https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip.git
cd paperclip
pnpm install
pnpm dev
This starts the UI and API at http://localhost:3100. An embedded PostgreSQL database is created automatically — no setup required.
Requirements: Node.js 24.11+, pnpm 9.15+
Local Claude and Codex subscription sign-in also needs Python 3 and the corresponding provider CLI on the Paperclip host. The Docker image includes them.
Source development also builds the native Paperclip Runner when enabled (the self-hosted default). Install a Rust toolchain, or set PAPERCLIP_RUNNER_BINARY to a compatible prebuilt runner.
FAQ
Q: Is this project maintained or just slop?
A: Paperclip is maintained by the Paperclip team. We've merged over 2,700 pull requests.
Q: What does a typical setup look like?
A: 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.
For remote access, use authenticated mode with a private-network bind such as Tailscale, or deploy the persistent server with Docker. See deployment modes and the Docker guide.
Q: Can I run multiple companies?
A: Yes. A single deployment can host multiple organizations with company-scoped data and access checks.
Q: How is Paperclip different from agents like OpenClaw or Claude Code?
A: Paperclip uses those agents. It orchestrates them into a company — with org charts, budgets, goals, governance, and accountability.
Q: Why should I use Paperclip instead of just pointing my OpenClaw to Asana or Trello?
A: Agent orchestration has subtleties in how you coordinate who has work checked out, how to maintain sessions, monitoring costs, establishing governance - Paperclip does this for you.
(Bring-your-own-ticket-system is on the Roadmap)
Q: Do agents run continuously?
A: Agents wake for assigned work and follow-up messages. Optional timer heartbeats let them check for work periodically; routines create recurring tasks on their own schedules. You can also connect externally running agents such as OpenClaw. A mention alone does not assign work or wake another agent.
Development
pnpm dev # Full dev (API + UI, watch mode)
pnpm dev:once # Full dev without file watching
pnpm dev:server # Server only
pnpm dev:mobile # Serve prebuilt UI on :3101 for phones/tablets (proxies /api → :3100)
pnpm dev:both # Run `pnpm dev` and `pnpm dev:mobile` together
pnpm build # Build all
pnpm typecheck # Type checking
pnpm test # Cheap default test run (Vitest only)
pnpm test:watch # Vitest watch mode
pnpm test:e2e # Playwright browser suite
pnpm db:generate # Generate DB migration
pnpm db:migrate # Apply migrations
pnpm test does not run Playwright. Browser suites stay separate and are typically run only when working on those flows or in CI.
See doc/DEVELOPING.md for the full development guide.
Roadmap
- ✅ Plugin system (e.g. add a knowledge base, custom tracing, queues, etc)
- ✅ Get OpenClaw / claw-style agent employees
- ✅ companies.sh - import and export entire organizations
- ✅ Easy AGENTS.md configurations
- ✅ Skills Manager, Skill Studio & Skills Store
- ✅ Scheduled Routines
- ✅ Better Budgeting
- ✅ Agent Reviews and Approvals
- ✅ Multiple Human Users
- ✅ Cloud / Sandbox agents (e2b, Cloudflare, Daytona, Modal, Novita, self-hosted Kubernetes)
- ✅ Artifacts & Work Products
- ✅ Deep Planning (planning mode, revisioned plans, plan approvals)
- ✅ Enforced Outcomes (watchdogs, recovery actions, review gates)
- ✅ MCP Tool Gateway & Apps (governed tool access)
- ✅ Secrets Manager with per-agent access
- ✅ Activity log & action attribution
- ✅ Self-healing runs & automatic recovery
- ✅ Agent evals & feedback
- ✅ Connected Apps
- ✅ Personal & Shared AI Accounts
- ✅ Shared Agents Use Personal GitHub Identities
- ✅ Skill Version History & Restore
- ✅ Document Comments & Revision History
- ✅ Company-Wide Search
- ✅ Multi-Model & Multi-Harness Teams
- 🟡 Memory / Knowledge
- ⚪ MAXIMIZER MODE
- ⚪ Work Queues
- ⚪ Self-Organization
- ⚪ Automatic Organizational Learning
- 🟡 Agent Chat
- 🟡 Cloud deployments
- ⚪ Desktop App
- ⚪ Bring-your-own-ticket-system (Asana / Linear / Jira as on-ramps)
This is the short roadmap preview. See the full roadmap in ROADMAP.md.
Community & Plugins
Find Plugins and more at awesome-paperclip
Observability
Paperclip ships with opt-in OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation for the server (traces only). It activates when OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT is set and supports grpc, http/protobuf, and http/json via the standard OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL env var. @opentelemetry/api is a normal server dependency; the SDK, auto-instrumentation, and exporter packages are optional peer dependencies — install them only if you want tracing. See doc/observability.md for install commands and the full env-var reference.
Paperclip also ships with opt-in Sentry error monitoring for the server and the browser. Set SENTRY_DSN_FRONTEND to activate it for the browser and SENTRY_DSN_BACKEND to activate it for the server — each variable is optional, and the legacy SENTRY_DSN variable still works as a fallback for either component. The supported server SDK version is @sentry/node@10.71.0; it is an optional peer dependency for the server, so install it only if you want error monitoring. The browser SDK, @sentry/browser, is pinned to the same exact version. See doc/observability.md for the install command, the privacy settings, and the full default capture set.
Telemetry
Paperclip collects anonymous usage telemetry to help us understand how the product is used and improve it. No personal information, issue content, prompts, file paths, or secrets are ever collected. Private repository references are hashed with a per-install salt before being sent.
Contributors changing emitted telemetry events should follow the Telemetry Data Contract. For proposed first-party events that are not in the generated contract yet, follow Telemetry Workflow.
Telemetry is enabled by default and can be disabled with any of the following:
| Method | How |
|---|---|
| Environment variable | PAPERCLIP_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 |
| Standard convention | DO_NOT_TRACK=1 |
| CI environments | Automatically disabled when CI=true |
| Config file | Set telemetry.enabled: false in your Paperclip config |
Contributing
We welcome contributions. See the contributing guide for details.
Community
- Discord — Join the community
- Twitter / X — Follow updates and announcements
- GitHub Issues — bugs and feature requests
- GitHub Discussions — ideas and RFC
License
MIT © 2026 Paperclip Labs, Inc
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Open source under MIT. Built for people who want to get work done, not babysit agents.