DottaandPaperclip
b889ac39b7
## Thinking Path > - Paperclip manages agents and their work. > - A delegated task reports its result to the source conversation through a durable completion outbox. > - Native execution can succeed before the presentation worker saves the accepted final reply. > - The outbox treated that short interval as a missing answer and cleared the target run. > - The presentation worker then rejected the valid answer because its delivery no longer belonged to that run. > - This change retains the existing target for one fixed presentation grace while accepted presentation is pending. > - The existing presentation owner can save the reply without another model run or more budget. ## Linked Issues or Issue Description **What happened?** A completion-delivery retry can run immediately after a native callback succeeds. It clears the callback's delivery target before the presentation worker saves the accepted answer. The reply then fails with `chat_completion_superseded`. A daily run limit correctly blocks the unnecessary replacement run, leaving the conversation active without its saved answer. **Expected behavior** The outbox must retain its current target and attempt while that exact native run has accepted presentation work. The existing presentation worker must save the answer once, acknowledge the delivery, and settle the conversation. Existing actor, session, result, digest, budget and retry checks must remain enforced. **Steps to reproduce** 1. Accept a native DONE result and current-turn final message for a completion callback. 2. Run its due completion-outbox handler after terminal projection but before reply presentation. 3. Run the existing presentation worker. Before this fix it rejects the reply because the outbox has cleared the target. **Paperclip version or commit** Reproduced on `b7f1c3769c00a107ffe4128b48b0ef8cc452cf3f` through the real PostgreSQL outbox and presentation services. The reported failure remains preserved. A new QA run is required after deployment; local tests do not qualify the deployed fix. Related: #17696 schedules accepted-response recovery. #18118 preserves canonical completion receipts. #18364 handles provider output and response-stage contracts. Those changes do not protect the completion-outbox target during this interval. ## What Changed - Defer a new execution attempt when the existing selector finds pending presentation for the same company, conversation, run and agent. - Retain the queued delivery target and attempt with an atomic compare-and-set. Await the existing scoped worker notification before that write in the same transaction. - Serialize retry with reply insertion under the existing child-task-first lock. Recheck locked task Done state and the delivery's stable completion-event version, status, target, attempt and exact lease. A delivered, retargeted or newer-claim winner prevents another wake. Admit the next attempt only after the winning transaction commits and releases its locks. - Limit presentation grace to five existing one-minute delivery leases, measured from the original run `finishedAt`. Clamp both the delivery lease and the native retry deadline to that immutable limit. Repeated sweeps cannot extend it. After expiry, resume the existing retry, exhaustion and daily-limit checks. - Keep publication authority in the existing materializer. The candidate query only defers a retry. Read the freshly reloaded delivery status, target and saved receipt after acquiring its child-task lock. - Fence both hold and retry writes with the exact claimed event version, attempt and lease. A stalled old hold cannot overwrite a newer lease. - Keep completion-event identity separate from mutable task ownership versions. Ordinary Done reassignment preserves its existing completion event; a real reopen retains normal supersession. - Add real PostgreSQL coverage for the observed ordering, outer commit and rollback, one saved reply, conversation settlement, idle SQL, retry boundaries and superseded deliveries. - Document the completion-outbox and presentation contract. ## Verification - Before the fix, the real PostgreSQL regression fails with `chat_completion_superseded` in `existingChatCompletionReply` when the outbox handles the terminal run first. After the fix, the same test passes without a new model wake. - Focused command: `vitest run --project @paperclipai/server server/src/services/native-runtime/agent-chat-response-recovery.test.ts server/src/__tests__/chat-completion-delivery.test.ts` — **95 pass** on `45f53a8c32fcca0bbdacf717286d37e30c1ba308`, using a disposable database on an owned local PostgreSQL 17 container. - Controls preserve retries for failed, cancelled, missing-final, missing-accepted-result, old-generation, foreign-company and foreign-agent targets. Reset or superseded task versions retain supersession. Digest and external-context declines never authorize a reply, never extend the fixed window, and leave it at exact expiry. An external native deadline cannot extend the limit. A valid reply at the last millisecond saves once without another model run. - The first reviewed head `b6f9c484b9567bc60af6d684c04e00058c1048ed` received Greptile 5/5 but an independent 3/5 review correctly found an unbounded hold. Three new real PostgreSQL controls failed on that source. This head adds the fixed bound and makes them pass. The earlier review, controls and CI remain retained; its review score does not qualify the new head. - The bounded predecessor `7300d2a978a5c4b3c13d85899bed3e98ae3c49fa` received an independent 4/5 review that correctly found an expiry-versus-in-flight-reply race. A real PostgreSQL advisory gate reproduced it after reply authority checked the delivery but before insertion. The retry lock and exact claim CAS now make that control pass. Both orderings, outer rollback, delivered/retargeted/superseded winners and competing lease claims pass. The next-wake test can acquire both parent and child locks, proving dispatch occurs after release. The valid 4/5 review and failing control remain retained. - At `39dd86e8f51d937cf382b2757736e0477201d21d`, both reviews found valid remaining defects: the reply helper still used its pre-lock delivery snapshot, and ordinary Done reassignment could stall a delivery by changing the task version. Four real PostgreSQL controls fail on that source and pass here: concurrent retry-first, a newly saved receipt after waiting, and reassignment within grace or at expiry. A real reopen through the issue service still supersedes the old event. - A later coordinator review found the hold CAS still lacked the attempt and lease fences already present on retry. A real PostgreSQL producer barrier reproduced an old hold shortening a newer claim from 120 seconds to 60 seconds. The same exact claim fences now prevent that overwrite. This failed control is retained; no old run was blindly retried. - The real worker saves one exact run-owned reply and acknowledges the delivery only after outer commit. An outer rollback publishes no reply. After settlement, advancing the scheduler clock by 60 seconds causes no further SQL. - Module boundaries, map structure, `git diff --check` and the canonical server build (including TypeScript and Runner vendor preparation) pass. The first local build stopped in the host package-manager setup; the installed pinned pnpm completed the build. Full repository typecheck, test and build gates pass in current-head CI; they have not all been run locally. - Final local checks also caught a test cleanup type error (TS2677) and one 94/95 readiness failure: the worker saves its comment before post-commit conversation settlement finishes. The test-only follow-up removes an invalid cleanup type predicate and waits on the existing bounded worker-quiet check before reading final state. All assertions and the same five-second bound remain. Source `45f53a8c32fcca0bbdacf717286d37e30c1ba308` passes all 95 cases and the canonical server build. The earlier failures are retained. - The final policy cleanup removes only 15 newly added narrative comment lines (seven service, eight test), as required by CONTRIBUTING.md. Both TypeScript AST signatures and `removeComments=true` emitted JavaScript are identical to tested source `45f53a8c32`. This was checked with the TypeScript 6.0.3 API and the installed native TypeScript 7.0.2 compiler. Assertions, timeouts and behavior are unchanged; the 95 tests were not repeated for identical compiled code. - The superseded `45f53a8c32` CI run recorded two 15-second timeouts in attention-retention cases. That failure remains retained. The test and its ten inspected owner or support files are identical on the tested master revisions. The canonical base run passes all 53 attention cases, and the comparison PR passes the same server lane, including those two cases in 9.3 and 9.8 seconds. This does not establish the timeout cause. Current-head CI is a new run after the required comment cleanup, not a retry of the failed source. - The optional Paperclip review bot ended neutral without a completed assessment because its execution paused. That result is not an approval. A separate [independent read-only audit](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/pull/18502#issuecomment-6550216227) reports 5/5 confidence on exact head `9cfd3f74c69cc7a2da7b4ee5d1fca80f15d4af0c`, with no findings. Its manual assessment does not replace or relabel the incomplete bot result. - Current head `9cfd3f74c69cc7a2da7b4ee5d1fca80f15d4af0c` has a fresh Greptile 5/5 review with no open threads. [CI run 41249007430](https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/actions/runs/41249007430) passes all primary jobs and both required gates (`ci / verify` and `ci / e2e`). All 59 PR contexts are terminal, with no failed contexts. The actual CI checkout is `18db9e2750d6a799f26b5b8ba31bcccbea254227`, which combines master `681f7b77262a9df6c1b4aad55291bf960061e491` with this exact head. Fresh QA verification on the deployed application remains required before claiming the live failure is fixed. ## Risks A candidate can retain a delivery whose stricter presentation checks still prevent publication, but only within the fixed five-minute window. The existing worker keeps publication authority. If a valid reply remains unavailable at expiry, the normal callback retry may require another admitted model run; the original result and completed child work remain preserved. Existing retry, exhaustion, model-run and spending limits still apply. Failed or cancelled execution and genuinely missing accepted output retain the existing retry path. ## Model Used OpenAI GPT-6 through Codex, with repository inspection, tool use and code execution. The runtime does not expose the exact hosted revision or context-window size. ## 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, boxd, 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.