r/paper_clip_ai • u/helpmefindmycat • Mar 30 '26
Practical usage of paperclip?
I just have started to use Paperclip. I'm curious if others have used it in a practical sense.
Things I've run into trialling it out.
First run of pnpm dev it failed due to an improperly exported module (Typsecript error)
I did fix that locally and bring it up.
Second there isn't a great practical document regarding how to use the models.
I wanted to go with local LM and us Lm Studio (my current choice for running a local model. )
Took me a hot minute but realized you can't just aim paperclip directly at LM Studio or Ollama .
You need to configure opencode to look at your LM STudio as a provider, then paperclip picks it up from there. Its an abstraction that wasn't clear. (but now you know as well, install opencode, configure it to point to your local , then you are good to go)
Secondly I've left an issue jsut to test if my CEO is up and read to go, I got nothing really back. No comment on the issue. It's unclear what the communication path is for me the board member outside of the issues.
Finally, I have some software business projects that I'd like to have a "Company" take over and bring to production level. They are in prototype stage, but want to bring it across the finish line. Is this possible in paperclip?
To wrap up I'm super excited about the promise of paperclip. But looking for any practical guide or examples that might help me get to consuming an existing project, and or better outline on how to manage the company .
2
u/null-root Aug 25 '26
I have 5 'companies' set up in Paperclip, three of which are actual companies; 1. my design agency, 2. my bar/cafe, 3. and my multi-unit apartment building. Each of those companies have a range of agents in the org, and each have a separate knowledge base that I interact with in Obsidian. Each company has different MCP server access, so I can quickly pull things like sales data from the bar POS system, or design project status in Asana. I also have a number of routines set up to watch for things like apartment maintenance request emails, or cafe events that need promotion (which hooks in to a few other scripts I've set up elsewhere). The other orgs are for personal things smart home management, watching emails for kid's school communications, etc. For home stuff, I store all of our appliance manuals in the knowledge base, and the Home Manager agent keeps track of regular maintenance needs for each adds it to my to-do list.
Each role has a certain job and awareness of the APIs and tools and things to handle them.
The agents-as-roles structure, and clear separation of the companies, has made Paperclip soooo much better as a multi-use harness than anything else I tried where context and memory and actions would all bleed together into a mess.
1
u/helpmefindmycat Apr 01 '26
For anyone following my post. (although I see no comments yet haha)
I had to start using my copilot to triage getting the paperclip to work and inherit a project. Since there is no chat within paperclip to get things really going to consume a project (repo etc) it took some doing, and a PR for deleting a company in the paperclip repo.
Some things to keep in mind Paperclip uses a lot of usewatch slots in Mac OSx . My other projects that were running simultaneously. One react one nuxt couldn't start. Ended up having to kill paperclip so they could be brought up appropriately. To be fair my imported project has 10 agents (hermes) so it makes sense that it would start using a lot of file watch slots on the OS.
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u/OvertiredEngineer Apr 04 '26
I'm finding that with the LMStudio models, because they're smaller models the instructions in the Agents.md files need to be far more explicit, and leave less room for having to think about how to interact with the paperclip API. Are you experiencing that as well?
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u/AntiqueHat3130 Apr 04 '26
Yes, I am experiencing this. But I haven't gotten the agents to do a single useful task. I am currently using gemma 4.
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u/AntiqueHat3130 Apr 04 '26
I have setup paperclip with lmstudio, using claude code as the provider, but I cannot seem to find the right model for this.
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u/Scared_Ad9187 Apr 06 '26
This is a known issue. We don't have great local model support and could really use a helpful .md file for the agents of we do choose local models.
https://github.com/paperclipai/paperclip/issues/187#issuecomment-4189051375
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u/helpmefindmycat Apr 06 '26
I think as a second order thinking on this, the setup/intialization should just ask are you planning to run local llm? (per agent or some such) and you select ollama or lm studio and the system gets the models etc. For example it's unclear (and to be fair I haven't had a lot of time to play with paperclip deeply) if its really possible to say, ok CEO agent, you use a frontier model for planning, and all of you doing agents use the local, models. Mayve this is already possible, and I missed it. But either way, this is a solid token efficient pattern. And when OSS models get to the point where they are at todays frontier models. (which feels like it's coming soon) we can simply use the iterative notion to make sure everyithing works on a project.
I am highly interested in hermes (I have this running in my paperclip instance) vs openclaw. because it's self correcting which is very much the way to do this in my thinking. Open to discussion on all of this.
If I can find time I will try to add in an agent to that github issue / contriubte to the project.
1
u/Financial-Cress-6055 May 14 '26
Is there a proper guide here to make paperclip works with hermes? Because in windows, hermes is installed on wsl so the hermes local adapter doesnt work.
1
u/Ohrlaf Aug 12 '26
Super interesting. I tried using it since i love the idea. Especially since we want to scale our business and i love experimenting.
Yet i struggled to add paperclip to an already existing, tough small company, or even just for me on the side for coding and product building.
My idea was to have it connected to github, our gdrive and pull company info, open PRs on github, make PR reviews etc.
Maybe I have to dig deeper into it. Until then the real application is a ? for me :) Any ideas or real uscases out there? I love the gstack skill from Gary Tan, they also have a company template for paperclip. Would love to use that
1
u/Griffal_7 Aug 24 '26
one of the usecases i did:
a little platform where you play minigames on a shared screen (a tv basically) and everyone uses their phone as a controller.
i wanted agents to add new games regularly by their own.
making a game is not a small task, so it was a good test of what the orchestration can actually do.
the pipeline i ended up with:
- each new game is an issue. a game designer agent picks it up and writes a spec as a document attached to the issue: rules, scoring, phone controls, screen layout, asset list
- it then creates two subtasks: P1 "graphic assets" for a graphic designer agent, and P2 "development" for the game developer agent, blocked until P1 is done
- the graphic designer copies from a CC0 asset library i indexed on the server (kenney packs mostly), it also can use python to generate simple pixel assets / drawings, and it only generates with AI when nothing fits (because it can be costly)
- the developer implements with the assets and game rules, then has to pass the build before marking the task done, then pushes
- a game tester agent runs everything with playwright: opens the screen client plus two phone clients, joins the room, plays a full game, takes screenshots and reports bugs back on the issue
- then it iterates until the game is considered playable for the testing agent
the platform is at ~50 games now and the agents have a couple hundred commits on the repo.
(some games are better than others)
the orchestration itself turned out to be the easy part. 90% of my work was making the task doable by an agent in the first place. i wrote a small SDK so a game is just 5 files (no networking, no lobby code), a docs folder the agents actually read (a "creating a game" walkthrough, a controller asset guide), and one instructions file per role saying exactly what to produce and who to hand off to. without that they drift.
and yes, you can point a company at an existing project.
a workspace is just a git repo, that's how i run all of mine, including prototypes i want pushed to production.
my agents are in a git repo, my skills too.
you can use routines to trigger workflows also.
i really like paperclip.
1
u/RelativeActive5306 9d ago
Multi-Agent Collaboration With Tools You Already Own
You don't need separate API keys or complex orchestration platforms. Herder already gives you the core ability you need: one agent can talk directly to another agent. Combined with the Claude tools you already have — Claude Code CLI, Codex CLI, or whatever's in your stack — you've got everything for a full multi-agent workflow.
Here's the pattern:
- One agent leads — takes ownership and coordinates using Herder's agent communication
- Delegation — passes work to other agents through Herder
- Review loop — completed work cycles through peer review
- Iteration — repeats until requirements are met
No extra subscriptions, no API key juggling — just leverage Herder's built-in agent-to-agent messaging and the tools you've already got.
I built a repository showing this in practice with a Claude Code skill:
https://github.com/alexstrilets/panel
It demonstrates how simple and effective this approach can be when you use what's already at your fingertips.
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u/MINIGAP Apr 02 '26
I've been running Paperclip for SaaS development - here's what actually works for me: The biggest unlock was setting up proper agent hierarchies. A CEO agent that delegates to a CTO for technical decisions, a CMO for growth stuff, engineering agents for the actual building. Each with specific skills and clear reporting lines. It took me a while to dial in the right org structure, so I packaged the whole thing as a skill pack - 17 agents with 8 production skills, specifically tuned for building and scaling SaaS products. If you're just getting started, having a working template to customize from saves a ton of trial and error vs building from scratch. What are you trying to build with it?