Paperclip: Turn All Your AI Agents Into a Real 'Company' – 5-Minute Setup

If you're using Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, OpenClaw, or OpenCode — there's a familiar problem:

Each AI runs in its own place. This terminal codes. That one debugs. Another writes content. You start losing track of what's happening.

A new tool on GitHub is solving exactly this. It's called Paperclip. Open source. Free. Takes about 5 minutes to set up. In its first week, it hit 1.6 million views and 14.2K GitHub stars.

Paperclip Dashboard — org chart, goal tracker, and budget control for all your AI agents

What Does Paperclip Do?

Simply put: Paperclip turns all your AI agents into a real company.

It gives you:

• An org chart
• Job titles and descriptions
• Monthly token budgets per agent
• Company goals & task alignment
• A centralized management dashboard

You already have AI workers. Paperclip just creates the company for them to work in.

8 Key Features

1. Org Chart

You create a structure that mirrors a real company:

CEO (Claude)
├── CTO
│   ├── Engineer (Codex)
│   └── Designer
└── CMO
    └── Marketer

Each agent has a job description, a manager, and clear responsibilities.

2. Goal Alignment

You set a top-level goal — for example: "Build AI SaaS → $1M MRR"

The system automatically breaks it down:

Goal → Projects → Tasks

Every agent always knows which goal their current task serves.

3. Heartbeats

Agents don't run 24/7 burning tokens pointlessly. They wake up on a schedule: check tasks → work → sleep. This keeps token costs completely under control.

4. Budget Control

Each agent has a monthly token budget. Once the budget runs out → agent stops. No more AI running in a loop and burning $200 in tokens overnight.

5. Ticket System & Audit Trail

Everything is logged in full:

• Conversation history
• Every tool call
• Agent decisions

If something goes wrong, you can trace back the entire history for debugging.

6. Works With Everything

Paperclip doesn't lock you into any single AI. Mix freely:

Paperclip only manages the workflow — it doesn't care which agent is running underneath.

7. Multi-Company

One dashboard can run multiple separate AI companies:

• AI marketing agency
• AI SaaS builder
• AI content studio

Each "company" has completely isolated data, budgets, and logs.

8. Governance — You Are the Board of Directors

You have ultimate authority:

• Approve "hiring" new agents
• Approve company strategy
• Shut down any agent at any time

Installation — 5-Minute Setup

Requirements

• Node.js ≥ 20

One-Command Install

npx paperclipai onboard --yes

This automatically opens a browser-based app to guide you through setting up your first AI CEO — no manual config files needed.

From Source (For Developers)

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip.git
cd paperclip

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Run onboarding
npm run onboard

Load Company Templates

# Clone the ready-made AI company templates
git clone https://github.com/paperclipai/companies.git

Import a template into the Paperclip dashboard → instantly get a complete AI company structure.

The Future: ClipMart

The team is building ClipMart — a marketplace for AI company templates:

• Marketing agency template
• SaaS builder template
• Content studio template

Just import a template → get a complete AI company structure without building from scratch.

Who Should Use Paperclip?

Paperclip is not for people using just one AI. It's for people running multiple agents, multiple terminals, multiple workflows simultaneously.

If you've ever:

• Opened 10 Claude Code terminals and forgotten which one is doing what
• Ran AI overnight and woke up to a surprising API bill
• Had multiple agents running in parallel with no clear communication between them

→ Paperclip is the solution.

One dashboard. One org chart. One budget system. All your AI agents managed like real employees.

Resources:

• 🐙 GitHub: github.com/paperclipai/paperclip
• 📦 Templates: github.com/paperclipai/companies