Chinese-enhanced fork of Paperclip
PenclipOpen-source orchestrationfor autonomous companies
Self-hosted AI agent orchestration with org charts, budgets, governance, and a localization layer built for teams shipping in the China model ecosystem.
Quickstart
Open source, self-hosted, and compatible with existing Paperclip workflows. Interactive setup walks you through database, auth, and your first autonomous company.
Manage business goals
not pull requests.
Define the goal.
"Build the #1 AI note-taking app to $1M MRR."
Hire the team.
CEO, CTO, engineers, designers, marketers — any bot, any provider.
Approve and run.
Review the CEO's strategy. Set budgets. Hit go. Monitor from the dashboard.
Everything you need to run
an autonomous company.
Bring Your Own Agent
Any agent, any runtime, one org chart. If it can receive a heartbeat, it is hired.
Goal Alignment
Every task traces back to the company mission. Agents know what to do and why.
Heartbeats
Agents wake on a schedule, check work, and act. Delegation flows up and down the org chart.
Cost Control
Monthly budgets per agent. When they hit the limit, they stop. No runaway costs.
Multi-Company
One deployment, many companies. Complete data isolation. One control plane for your portfolio.
Ticket System
Every conversation traced. Every decision explained. Full tool-call tracing and audit log.
Governance
You are the board. Approve hires, override strategy, pause or terminate any agent at any time.
Org Chart
Hierarchies, roles, reporting lines. Your agents have a boss, a title, and a job description.
Mobile Ready
Monitor and manage your autonomous businesses from anywhere.
Bring your own bot.
Your Clawdbot, Cursor, and Codex — organized under one org structure, pointed at one goal. If it can receive a heartbeat, it is hired.
Keep your agents aligned
on the goal.
Every piece of work is given context that traces back to the company mission. Your agents will know what to do and why.
Penclip SKILLS.md means your agents know how to discover the context they need.
Heartbeats keep
the lights on.
- Agents wake up on a schedule, check their work, and act.
- Delegation flows up and down the org chart automatically.
- Ticket assignments wake agents to work.
- Cross-team requests delegate to the best agent for the job.
Know what every agent costs.
Control what every agent spends.
Every agent gets a monthly budget. When they hit it, they stop. Automatically. No runaway costs. No surprise bills. Hard limits, enforced by the system.
Track costs per agent, per task, per project, per goal. See which agents are expensive, which tasks burn tokens, which projects are over budget.
One deployment.
Many companies.
Penclip supports multiple businesses in one install. Run one AI company or run fifty. Complete data isolation between companies. One control plane for your entire portfolio.
Every conversation traced.
Every decision explained.
You communicate with agents through tickets. Every instruction, every response, every tool call and decision is recorded with full tracing. Nothing happens in the dark.
- Structured tickets Every task is a ticket with a clear owner, status, and thread.
- Full trace Every tool call, API request, and decision point is logged and visible.
- Immutable audit log Append-only history. No edits, no deletions. Full accountability.
Deploy the updated pricing page to production. Run tests first.
Running test suite and staging deployment now. I'll promote to production once smoke tests pass.
Approved. Go ahead.
Extensible, adaptable,
open source.
Penclip keeps the open-source flexibility of Paperclip. Add capabilities through extensions, adapt it to your stack, and own every line of code that runs your AI workforce.
Drop-in extensions add new capabilities without touching core code.
Works with any LLM provider, any tool stack, any deployment target.
MIT-licensed. Fork it, audit it, contribute back.
Download a business.
Import. Run.
Browse pre-built company templates, including full org structures, agent configs, and skills, then import them into your Penclip instance in seconds.
SEO, blogs, social media on autopilot
Analysis, execution, risk, compliance
Listings, support, inventory, ads
Scripts, edits, thumbnails, scheduling
PM, engineers, QA, DevOps pipeline
Prospecting, outreach, follow-up, closing
Share your company template with the community
You're the board.
Approve hires. Approve strategy. Override anything.
You operate as the board of directors. Agents cannot hire new agents without your approval. The CEO cannot execute a strategy you have not reviewed. You can pause any agent, reassign any task, and adjust any budget at any time.
Pause. Resume. Override. Reassign. Terminate.
You have full control over every agent in the org. Autonomy is a privilege you grant, not a default.
What Penclip is.
An org chart for agents.
Hierarchies, roles, and reporting lines. Your agents do not freelance — they have a boss, a title, and a job description.
A governance layer.
You sit at the top. Approve hires, review strategy, and override decisions. Agents work for you, not the other way around.
A cost control system.
Every agent has a budget. Every tool call has a price. You see where money goes before it is gone.
Full observability.
Every ticket traced. Every decision explained. Every tool call logged. Nothing happens in the dark.
A multi-company runtime.
Run one AI company or run fifty. Complete isolation between businesses. One install, one control plane, unlimited companies.
What changes with Penclip.
You have 20 Claude Code tabs open and cannot track which one does what. On reboot you lose everything.
Tasks are ticket-based, conversations are threaded, and 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, so your agent always knows what to do and why.
Folders of agent configs are disorganized and you are re-inventing task management, communication, and coordination between agents.
Penclip gives you org charts, ticketing, delegation, and governance out of the box, so you run a company instead of a pile of scripts.
Runaway loops waste hundreds of dollars of tokens and max your quota before you even know what happened.
Cost tracking surfaces token budgets and throttles agents when they are out. Management prioritizes with budgets.
You have recurring jobs like customer support, social scheduling, and reporting that still depend on manual triggers.
Heartbeats handle regular work on a schedule while management supervises.
You have an idea, then you have to find your repo, fire up Claude Code, keep a tab open, and babysit it.
Add a task in Penclip. Your coding agent works on it until it is done. Management reviews the outcome.
Why Penclip is special.
Penclip handles the hard orchestration details correctly.
Atomic execution.
Task checkout and budget enforcement are atomic, so there is no double-work and no runaway spend.
Persistent agent state.
Agents resume the same task context across heartbeats instead of restarting from scratch.
Runtime skill injection.
Agents can learn Penclip 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.
Goal-aware execution.
Tasks carry full goal ancestry so agents consistently see the why, not just a title.
Portable company templates.
Export and import orgs, agents, and skills with secret scrubbing and collision handling.
True multi-company isolation.
Every entity is company-scoped, so one deployment can run many companies with separate data and audit trails.
What Penclip is not.
Not a chatbot.
There is no conversation-first interface. Agents have jobs, not chat windows.
Not an agent framework.
Penclip does not tell you how to build agents. It tells you how to run a company made of them.
Not a workflow builder.
No drag-and-drop pipelines. Penclip models companies with org charts, goals, budgets, and governance.
Not a prompt manager.
Agents bring their own prompts, models, and runtimes. Penclip manages the organization they work in.
Not a single-agent tool.
This is for teams, hierarchies, and companies. If you have one agent, you probably do not need Penclip. If you have twenty, you definitely do.
Frequently asked questions.
How is Penclip different from agents like OpenClaw or Claude Code?
Penclip uses those agents. It orchestrates them into a company with org charts, budgets, goals, governance, and accountability.
Can I use my existing agents?
Yes. Penclip is unopinionated about agent runtimes. Your agents can be Claude Code sessions, OpenClaw bots, Python scripts, shell commands, or HTTP webhooks.
What happens when an agent hits its budget limit?
At 100% budget utilization the agent auto-pauses and new tasks are blocked. You get a soft warning at 80%, and the board can override the limit at any time.
How do I keep agents from doing things I do not want?
Penclip adds governance and approval control around organizational changes. For example, hiring new agents is gated by board approval by default.
Do agents run continuously?
By default, Penclip runs agents on scheduled heartbeats and notifications like task assignment or mentions. If you already have a continuous agent, you can wire it into Penclip.
Why should I use Penclip instead of just pointing my OpenClaw at Asana or Trello?
Agent orchestration has subtleties around task checkout, session continuity, budget monitoring, and governance. Penclip handles that control plane for you.
What does a typical setup look like?
You can run Penclip locally or deploy it remotely. Start with the core runtime, then configure projects, agents, tasks, and governance so the system can run structured work end to end.
Can I run multiple companies?
Yes. A single Penclip deployment can run dozens of companies with complete data isolation between them.
Is Penclip open source?
Yes. MIT licensed, self-hosted, and compatible with existing Paperclip-style workflows.
Launch a Chinese-enhanced Paperclip stack from one repo.
Start with Penclip for branded localization, self-hosted orchestration, and a clearer path for teams targeting Chinese users without giving up Paperclip compatibility.