Sistava

Paperclip

Open-source, self-hosted layer to manage AI agents as employees (org chart, budgets, governance)

About Paperclip

Paperclip is an open-source, self-hosted platform for managing AI agents as if they were employees. It gives you an org chart, per-agent budgets, goal alignment, a ticket-style audit trail, and board-level approval gates on top of agents you bring yourself (Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Cursor, or any runtime). The reframing is sharp: you are not using an AI tool, you are managing a team. The key distinction: Paperclip is the governance and coordination layer, not the workforce. You still build or connect each agent, supply your own model keys, and host the whole stack. Sistava ships the employees themselves, fully managed, so a non-technical founder hires a pre-built team and it starts working in minutes without any infrastructure to run.

Platform details

Official website

Paperclip is a management layer. Sistava is the workforce.

The cleanest way to understand the difference is to ask what you get on day one. With Paperclip, you get the scaffolding to run agents like a company: an org chart, budgets per agent, goal tracking, and an approval and audit system. What you do not get is the agents. You connect your own (Claude, OpenAI, Gemini, Cursor, or a custom runtime), supply your own model keys, and stand up the hosting yourself. With Sistava, the employees are the product. You hire a marketing team, a sales team, or a single specialist, and they start doing the work right away on managed infrastructure with LLM credits already included. The org structure, budgets, scheduling, and approval gates are there too, but they sit inside a product you do not have to operate.

Who should pick which

Paperclip is a strong fit for technical teams that already run their own agents and want a governance and cost-control layer they fully own and self-host. If data residency, source-code access, and bringing your own runtime matter more than setup time, Paperclip earns its place. Sistava is the better fit for founders and small teams who want the outcome, not the infrastructure. If you would rather hire a pre-built AI employee and have it execute real work across browser, voice, and your business apps without running a stack, Sistava gets you there in minutes.

Comparison