OpenBot: A Local-First Workspace for AI Teammates

TL;DR: OpenBot is an Electron desktop app that runs Codex, Claude, and Grok side by side with separate workspaces, a task queue, and agent-to-agent messaging. It has 3,296 stars, and it is licensed PolyForm Noncommercial, not MIT.

What it is

The description covers the feature list in one sentence: a local-first desktop workspace for persistent AI teammates, running Codex, Claude, and Grok with dedicated workspaces, task queues, file sharing, browser control, and agent-to-agent collaboration.

Two words in that sentence carry the design. “Persistent” means the agents keep state between sessions rather than starting blank each time. “Teammates” means several agents run concurrently and can hand work to each other, rather than one assistant in one chat window.

The topic list backs it up with the technical shape of the project: ai-agents, bun, codex, electron, local-first, and macos.

Read the license before you try it

This is the detail that should decide whether the project is for you.

The GitHub API reports NOASSERTION for the license identifier, which means GitHub found a license file but could not map it to a standard SPDX identifier. Reading the file directly gives the answer: PolyForm Noncommercial License 1.0.0.

That is not a standard open source license. The copyright license lets you use, modify, and distribute the software, but the use grant is limited to noncommercial purposes. If you want to run this in a company, the license terms do not cover you, and you need a separate arrangement with the authors.

For a personal desktop app that is a perfectly reasonable choice. For a team workspace, which is what the project is reaching for, it is a meaningful constraint, and one worth raising with the maintainers before you build a workflow on top.

Metric	Value
Stars	3,296
Forks	316
Open issues	315
Primary language	TypeScript
License	PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0
Repository size	202 MB
Created	2026-08-12
Last push	2026-10-29

The repository is built for agents as well as humans

.agents/
.claude/
.codex/
.storybook/
.nvmrc
AGENTS.md
ANALYTICS.md
CHANGELOG.md
CLA.md
NOTICE
PRIVACY.md

The three dot directories at the top are agent configuration for three different clients. The app ships configuration that Claude Code, Codex, and a generic agents directory can each consume, which means the same setup can be driven from a terminal agent and from the desktop UI.

PRIVACY.md and ANALYTICS.md sitting side by side is the pair you want to see in an app that claims to be local-first. Local-first and a telemetry policy are in tension, and shipping both documents is at least an acknowledgement of it. Read both before you point it at sensitive work.

CLA.md means the project accepts a contributor license agreement, and .githooks is present alongside it.

How to try it

git clone https://github.com/nightly-labs/openbot.git
cd openbot

The project site at openbot.run is the distribution point, and the macos topic plus the Electron stack suggest the desktop build is the primary path. There is a .nvmrc at the root pinning the Node version, and Bun is in the topic list, so both runtimes appear in play.

When to use it

The honest case is personal multi-agent experimentation. Running three different coding agents against separate workspaces and letting them talk to each other is a setup most people have never assembled by hand, and here it is a product with a UI.

It also makes sense as a local-first counterweight. If your instinct is that agent work should not require a hosted service to coordinate, this is a complete implementation of that idea.

When not to use it

Do not plan a commercial team deployment on it. The noncommercial license is the constraint, and it applies regardless of how good the product gets.

Also note the ratio between signals. Three hundred and fifteen open issues on 3,296 stars means roughly one open issue for every ten stars, on a project that is barely two and a half months old. It grew by 1,054 stars today. Interest is arriving faster than the edges are being smoothed.

Source and Accuracy Notes

• Project page: https://openbot.run/
• Source repository: nightly-labs/openbot (verified via GitHub API html_url)
• License: PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 (read from the repository LICENSE file; the GitHub API reports NOASSERTION)
• Stars at time of writing: 3296