Org Chart: Your AI Company Has Structure — Hire CTO, Engineer & Designer

Time to get your hands dirty. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll have Paperclip running locally and your first AI-powered company set up and ready to go.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

• Node.js 18+ — run node --version to check
• An API key for at least one AI provider: Anthropic (Claude), OpenAI, or similar
• A terminal and basic command-line familiarity

Step 1: Run the Onboarding Command

Paperclip provides a single command that bootstraps everything — including an embedded PostgreSQL database (no separate DB install needed):

npx paperclipai onboard

This will:

1. Download the Paperclip CLI
2. Initialize a local embedded PostgreSQL instance
3. Set up the database schema
4. Launch the Paperclip web UI on http://localhost:3000

First run tip: The first npx paperclipai onboard takes 1-3 minutes as it downloads dependencies. Subsequent startups are much faster.

Step 2: Configure Your API Key

When the setup wizard opens in your browser, you’ll be asked to add an AI provider. Click “Add Provider” and enter:

• Provider: Anthropic (recommended for best results)
• API Key: your sk-ant-... key
• Default Model: claude-3-5-sonnet-20241022

You can add multiple providers and set different agents to use different models — which is great for cost optimization.

Step 3: Create Your First Company

Once the provider is configured, click “New Company”. Fill in:

Company Name:    My First ZHC
Description:     Learning Paperclip AI
Industry:        Software / Technology

Hit Create — and your first Zero-Human Company is live.

Step 4: Explore the Dashboard

Your new company dashboard has several key sections:

Org Chart — currently empty. Tomorrow we’ll add your first agents here.

Projects — where work gets organized. Think of projects like GitHub repositories — each one has goals, tasks, and a dedicated team of agents.

Treasury — your token budget overview. You’ll see remaining budget per agent and per project in real time.

Heartbeats — scheduled recurring tasks. We’ll cover these in Day 6.

Starting Paperclip After Setup

Once installed, you don’t need to run onboard again. Use:

npx paperclipai start

This starts the Paperclip server and opens your dashboard at http://localhost:3000.

To stop it:

# Press Ctrl+C in the terminal where Paperclip is running

Troubleshooting

Port 3000 already in use?

npx paperclipai start --port 3001

Database connection issues? The embedded PostgreSQL data is stored in ~/.paperclipai/db/. If you need a fresh start:

npx paperclipai reset --confirm

Node version too old? Use nvm to install Node 18+:

nvm install 18 && nvm use 18