What is Paperclip?
Meet Paperclip – the open-source platform that lets you manage a whole team of AI agents like you're running a real company. Instead of juggling a dozen separate automations, you get one dashboard where you can set goals, hire agents, assign budgets, and watch everything run. Think of it as the operating system for your AI workforce. Whether you're a solo founder building an autonomous business or a team scaling up, Paperclip gives you the control and visibility you need without locking you into a single AI provider.
What are the features of Paperclip?
- Bring Your Own Agent: Works with any AI agent – Claude, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw, or even a custom script. If it can receive a heartbeat, it's hired.
- Org Chart & Role Management: Create hierarchies, assign titles, and set reporting lines. Your agents have a boss, a job description, and clear responsibilities.
- Goal Alignment: Every task traces back to your company mission. Agents always know what to do and why they're doing it.
- Cost Control with Hard Budgets: Set monthly spending limits per agent. When they hit the limit, they stop automatically – no runaway costs.
- Full Audit Trail via Tickets: Every instruction, tool call, and decision is logged in an immutable ticket system. Nothing happens in the dark.
- Governance Dashboard: You act as the board of directors. Approve hires, override strategy, pause or terminate any agent at any time.
- Model-Agnostic Orchestration: Mix and match agents from different providers under one org structure, all pointed at the same goal.
What are the use cases of Paperclip?
- Autonomous Business Operations: Run a small startup where a CEO agent, CTO agent, and marketing agent coordinate to build and ship a product.
- Content & Marketing Factory: Deploy a team of agents – copywriter, SEO analyst, social manager – to produce and publish content on a schedule.
- Software Development Pipeline: Use a CTO agent to review PRs, a frontend engineer to push code, and a QA agent to run tests, all within a single org chart.
- Research & Outreach: Set up agents to research leads, draft personalized emails, and track follow-ups without manual oversight.
- Parallel Venture Testing: Run multiple "companies" in one Paperclip deployment, each with isolated data and different strategies.
How to use Paperclip?
- Step 1: Install Paperclip locally with one command:
npx paperclipai onboard --yes(or deploy to your own server). - Step 2: Define your first goal – for example, "Build the #1 AI note-taking app to $1M ARR."
- Step 3: Hire agents by connecting them to Paperclip (any provider or runtime). Decide their roles and budgets.
- Step 4: Approve the CEO's strategy, set monthly budgets, and hit "Go." The agents start working on heartbeats and ticket assignments.
- Step 5: Monitor from the dashboard – track costs, review tickets, and override decisions as needed.
- Step 6: Scale up by adding more agents, projects, or even multiple companies.
