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Free Guide

Build an AI Company
in 5 Minutes

Paperclip is a free, open-source tool that just hit 1.6 million views in its first week. It takes every AI agent you already use (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex) and organizes them into an actual company with an org chart, job titles, budgets, and one dashboard.

Section 1

What is Paperclip?

If you've ever had three AI tools open at once and no idea what each one was doing, this is for you.

Paperclip is a free, open-source tool that acts as the operating layer for your AI agents. You give each agent a role (CEO, coder, designer, marketer), a boss to report to, a budget, and a goal. Then you manage everything from one dashboard, on your laptop or your phone.

It was created by @dotta, launched on GitHub under the MIT license, and hit 1.6 million views in its first week. No account required. No subscription. Self-hosted on your own machine.

The key insight: you've already been running AI workers in isolation. Paperclip gives them a company structure. Now instead of Claude doing one thing in a terminal and Cursor doing another in a separate window, they have a shared mission, a reporting structure, and budgets. Every task traces back to one big goal you set.

Section 2

Install It (1 Command)

You'll need Node.js 20+ installed. If you've set up Claude Code before, you already have it. Open your terminal and run:

The one-command method

Terminal
$ npx paperclipai onboard --yes

That's the entire install. Paperclip creates its database automatically, sets everything up, and launches your dashboard at http://localhost:3100. No separate setup needed.

Prefer to do it manually?

Terminal 
$ git clone https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip.git
$ cd paperclip
$ pnpm install
$ pnpm dev

Requires: Node.js 20+ and pnpm 9.15+

Section 3

What Happens After You Install

Once the dashboard is running at localhost:3100, here's exactly what to do next.

01

Create your first company

Name it and set the mission. This is the goal everything else connects to — something like "Build a content scheduling app" or "Automate my client reporting workflow."

02

Hire your first agent (the CEO)

Paperclip starts with a CEO agent. Assign it a budget and it will review your mission and recommend which agents to hire next — like a coder, a designer, or a researcher.

03

Approve the hires and set budgets

You're the board of directors. Every hire goes through you. You set a monthly token budget for each agent — when they hit it, they stop. No surprise bills.

04

Watch it work

Agents wake up on their scheduled heartbeat, check the ticket system for tasks, do the work, and report back. Every decision is logged. Every tool call is traced. Check it all from the dashboard — on any device.

Section 4

The 8 Features That Matter

Here's what Paperclip actually gives you, and why each one matters for someone running AI tools without a technical background.

1. Org Charts

You create roles just like a real company — CEO, CTO, engineers, designers, marketers. Each agent gets a title, a job description, and a boss. The reporting structure isn't cosmetic. It determines how work flows between agents.

2. Goal Alignment

You set one company-level goal. That goal breaks into projects. Projects break into tasks. Every agent working on a task can see why it matters — not just what to do, but what the bigger picture is. This is the difference between an agent that finishes a task and one that finishes the right task.

3. Heartbeats

Agents don't run 24/7 burning money. They wake up on a schedule — called a heartbeat — check if there's work to do, do it, and go back to sleep. You control how often each agent checks in. Costs stay predictable.

4. Budget Controls

Every agent gets a monthly spending limit. When they hit it, they stop — period. Paperclip tracks every dollar spent on AI tokens in real time. You'll never wake up to a surprise bill because an agent got stuck in a loop.

5. Ticket System

All work happens through tickets. Every conversation is threaded, every tool call is traced, every decision is logged. If something goes wrong, you can trace back exactly what happened, when, and why. No more mystery outputs.

6. Works With Any Tool You Already Use

Paperclip isn't locked to one AI provider. It works with Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, plain bash scripts, or anything that can receive a signal over HTTP. You can mix providers — your CEO agent could run on Claude while your engineering agents run on Codex. Paperclip just organizes them.

7. Multi-Company Support

One Paperclip installation runs multiple companies. Each has completely separate data, budgets, and audit trails. If you want to run an AI marketing agency and an AI SaaS company at the same time, one dashboard handles both.

8. Governance

You approve every hire. You review every strategy change. You can pause or shut down any agent at any time. Configuration changes are versioned — if something breaks, you can roll it back. You're in control the whole time.

Section 5

Before vs. Right Now

Before

  • Multiple terminals open, no idea who's doing what
  • Copying outputs between tools manually
  • No budget visibility — surprise bills happen
  • Restart your computer and lose all context
  • No audit trail — can't trace what went wrong

Now

  • One dashboard, org chart, every agent accounted for
  • Tasks flow automatically through the reporting structure
  • Per-agent budgets, real-time token tracking
  • Tasks persist across reboots — nothing gets lost
  • Every decision logged and traceable

Paperclip is MIT licensed and self-hosted. Your data never leaves your machine. Created by @dotta and available at github.com/paperclipai/paperclip. ClipMart, a marketplace for pre-built AI company templates, is on the roadmap.

Quick Reference

The Commands You Need

Install (one command)

Terminal
$ npx paperclipai onboard --yes

Manual install

Terminal 
$ git clone https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip.git
$ cd paperclip && pnpm install && pnpm dev

Dashboard

Browser
http://localhost:3100

Requirements

Node.js 20+ and pnpm 9.15+

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