theNetworkChuck / paperclip-guide

# Paperclip: build your AI IT department
**The companion guide to the NetworkChuck video.** 
Install Paperclip, hire your AI agents, and give them real work, one step at a time.
 ▶ Watch the video: you need to try Paperclip RIGHT NOW! 
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## What is Paperclip?
Paperclip is an open-source app for running a team of AI agents like a company. Your agents become employees. They get managers, job descriptions and tasks, and they talk to each other through those tasks. You sit at the top as **the board**: you approve hires, answer the big questions, and can stop anything.
It's a **meta-harness**. It doesn't replace Claude Code, Codex, Hermes or Pi. It hires them. Whatever agent you already use, and whatever comes out next month, can join the same company.
## What you'll build
The same department the video builds: a Claude Code CEO, three remote Hermes agents you already run, and a crew the CEO hires for you on Codex and on a free local model.
 [code] 
And here's that department as Paperclip draws it (a clean test install on 2026.916.1):
 Every harness on one roster: Claude Code, Codex, Hermes, Pi 
 Each task carries its parent, blockers, reviewers, approvers and watchdog 
## The path
Follow it in order the first time. Each chapter ends with a fix-it table for the problems people actually hit.
| # | Chapter | What you'll do |
|---|---------|----------------|
| 1 | Pick a machine | Decide where Paperclip runs: your computer to play, a server to commit |
| 2 | Install Paperclip | Node 24, the install, onboarding, and keeping it running |
| 3 | Your first company and CEO | Create the company, hire a Claude Code CEO, set the rules |
| 4 | Hire remote Hermes agents | Bring agents you already run on other machines into the company |
| 5 | Build the team | Have the CEO hire Codex and local-model agents, with your approval |
| 6 | Give them work | Projects, tasks, Cases, Decisions and Artifacts |
| 7 | Approvals and watchdogs | Keep humans in charge and double-check "done" |
| 8 | Routines and daily standups | Scheduled work, and a standup where agents ask each other questions |
| 9 | Plug in Flare | Hire an agent that watches what's leaked about you |
| 10 | Export your company | Package the whole department and import it anywhere |
| 11 | Troubleshooting | Every error we hit, and the fix |
## Take-home files
Copy-paste text for every prompt in the video's workflow, plus the Flare skill.
| File | What it's for |
|------|---------------|
| `prompts/ceo-job-description.md` | The CEO's job, pasted into its instructions |
| `prompts/hire/` | Plain-English hire tickets: Security Reviewer, Tooling Engineer, Scanner, Watchdog, Help Desk, Exposure Analyst |
| `prompts/tasks/` | Test the team, the first real investigation, the first Flare sweep |
| `prompts/routines/` | The daily storage check and the daily agent standup |
| `skills/flare/` | A Paperclip skill that reads your Flare feed and never prints a credential |
## Before you start
- **A machine.** Your Mac, a Li