Switch from Paperclip to Task Machine

Paperclip is a free, MIT-licensed control plane for teams of AI agents, with org charts, roles, heartbeats, budgets, board approvals, and audit logs, which you run yourself with one command. Task Machine is a hosted system for recurring business work. If Paperclip is the agent organization to design, Task Machine is where the outreach, the content, and the client report get done and approved.

Why do people switch from Paperclip?

• The organization stops being the point. Paperclip's draw is the company model itself. At some point you want the work. Task Machine runs recurring business operations as explicit workflows, shared by a team of humans and agents.
• Self-hosting is a second job. You install, upgrade, and keep the stack running yourself. Task Machine is hosted, and agents run in the Cloud by default. You keep 100% of your revenue, Task Machine takes no cut, and it never custodies your accounts.
• Governance as a daily surface. Paperclip gives you approvals, budgets, and audit logs to configure. In Task Machine, approval and question steps and verifier checks land in one Inbox as part of daily work.
• A stocked catalog instead of a blank control plane. A catalog of 140 playbooks across 17 categories installs the agents, workflows, and documents for a concrete job in a few clicks.

What maps to what?

Prices and features were checked against each vendor's own pages on 6 October 2026.

What do you give up?

Paperclip is free and MIT-licensed, with a large open-source community. You can read every line, change anything, run it without a subscription, and keep the whole stack on hardware you control. Task Machine is a hosted, paid product with a 7-day trial. If open source and full ownership of the stack are requirements, Paperclip is the better fit.

How does the switch work?

1. Create your Task Machine workspace and connect the accounts you own, such as email, Stripe, and repositories.
2. Turn your org chart into jobs: for each role your Paperclip agents held, pick the playbook that does that work, such as outreach, content, reporting, or support.
3. Let agents run in the Cloud, or connect a computer you control. The machine that ran your Paperclip stack works.
4. Start with a low autonomy level, recreate your heartbeats as scheduled workflows, and set budgets that warn you as spending nears the limit.

Common questions

Is Task Machine open source like Paperclip?

No. Task Machine is a hosted product. Agents act through accounts you own, and every run keeps a step-by-step history you can inspect.

Do I lose the org-chart structure?

You trade it for teams and workflows. Agents still have roles and responsibilities, and control runs through approval and question steps and verifier checks instead of reporting lines.

Why pay for something Paperclip does for free?

If Paperclip's shape fits you, stay. People switch when the upkeep and assembly stop being fun, and Task Machine trades that time for a hosted system, one Inbox, and a playbook catalog that starts real business work the same day.