PAPERCLIP CHEATSHEET

CLI, concepts, and control plane — from paperclip.ing & docs.paperclip.ing

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📎 What is Paperclip?

Control plane for AI companies: org charts, goals, issues, budgets, approvals, heartbeats. Agents run in your tools; Paperclip coordinates work and spend.

⚡ Quickstart

npx paperclipai onboard --yes

Then: create company → goal → agents → adapters. Dev: pnpm install && pnpm dev (http://localhost:3100).

pnpm paperclipai run

Auto-onboard, doctor --repair, start server

🏢 Core concepts

Company

Isolated tenant: org, goals, agents, data

Issue / task

Owned unit of work with trace

Agent

Employee + adapter to external runtime

Heartbeat

Scheduled wake; claim work, report

Approval

Board gate for hires / sensitive actions

Budget

Per-agent cap; pause at 100%

⌨️ Setup CLI

pnpm paperclipai onboard [--yes] [--run]

Interactive setup

pnpm paperclipai doctor [--repair]

Health checks

pnpm paperclipai configure --section server|secrets|storage

Config sections

pnpm paperclipai env

Resolved environment

pnpm paperclipai allowed-hostname <host>

Private hostname allowlist

🎛️ Control-plane CLI

Issues

Task lifecycle

Company & agents

company list|get|export|import

Tenant + portable packages

agent list|get

Inspect employees

Approvals & activity

approval list|get|approve|reject|…

Board decisions

activity list [--agent-id] [--entity-type issue]

Audit trail

dashboard get

Snapshot

heartbeat run --agent-id <id>

Run heartbeat for agent

🔑 Context profiles

context set --api-base URL [--company-id]

Default CLI target

context show|list|use <profile>

Manage ~/.paperclip/context.json

Global flags: --data-dir, --api-base, --api-key, --company-id, --json

🔌 Adapters

Claude local, Codex, Gemini, HTTP, process — see docs.paperclip.ing/adapters. Agents must handle heartbeat protocol.

🛡️ Governance & costs

Approvals for hires; budgets with soft warning ~80% and hard stop at 100%; full activity log for tickets.

🔧 Troubleshooting

API unreachable — Check server, --api-base, hostname allowlist

Wrong company — context set --company-id or pass flag

No agent pickup — Adapter + heartbeat wiring

Paused budget — Raise limit or override in UI

pnpm paperclipai doctor --repair

Auto-fix common config issues

📖 Glossary

Control plane

Paperclip API + UI

Adapter

Runtime bridge

Heartbeat

Wake / work loop signal

📂 Default paths

~/.paperclip/instances/default/config.json

~/.paperclip/instances/default/db

~/.paperclip/instances/default/logs

~/.paperclip/instances/default/data/storage

~/.paperclip/context.json

Scan to open online

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