Claw-Empire is an open source simulator that treats AI coding agents such as Claude Code and Codex CLI as employees and runs them together inside a pixel-art virtual office. You sit at the CEO’s desk, assign tasks to departments — Planning, Development, Design, QA, DevSecOps, and Operations — and track progress on a kanban board. It follows a local-first design that runs entirely on your own machine, and it is licensed under Apache 2.0. Published by GreenSheep, the project had reached version 2.x as of 2026.
When you try to run several agents at once, terminal tabs pile up and it becomes hard to tell which agent is doing what. Claw-Empire replaces that situation with the metaphor of an org chart, so the whole picture is visible at a glance.
Key Features
- Central management of multiple agents: Supports Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, OpenCode, Kimi Code, GitHub Copilot, and Antigravity. Connect them via CLI, OAuth, or an API key and run them side by side in the same office
- Departmental structure and a pixel-art UI: Agents are placed across six departments — Planning, Development, Design, QA/QC, DevSecOps, and Operations. An animated office screen rendered with PixiJS shows visually who is working on what
- Kanban-based task management: Track the full lifecycle from Inbox to Done on a kanban board. Real-time updates over WebSocket reflect progress on screen immediately
- Work isolation with Git worktrees: Each agent works in its own git worktree, so parallel runs are far less likely to collide. There is also a flow for inspecting worktree contents and verification results before merging
- Workflow packs and deliverable output: Six built-in workflow profiles cover development, reports, web research, novels, video pre-production, and roleplay. Meeting minutes can be generated automatically, and reports or minutes can be exported as PowerPoint slides
- Messenger integration: Connects to Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Google Chat, Signal, and iMessage so you can send instructions or check progress while away from your desk. OAuth and messenger tokens are stored encrypted
Pricing
| Plan | Price | Highlights |
|---|---|---|
| Open source (Apache 2.0) | $0 | All features available. Free for personal and commercial use |
Pricing is current as of August 2026. Please check the official repository for the latest information.
Claw-Empire itself is free, but the AI agents it drives are not: you still pay separately for Claude Code or Codex CLI subscriptions, or for usage-based API billing. The more agents you add, the faster those costs accumulate, so it is worth estimating them up front.
Pros & Cons
✅ Pros
- See the status of multiple AI agents on a single screen, without hopping between terminals
- Git worktrees isolate each agent’s work, reducing conflicts during parallel execution
- Apache 2.0 open source, free to use including commercially
- Not locked to one agent — combine Claude Code, Codex CLI, Gemini CLI, and others
- Docker support lets you try it without cluttering your development machine
- The UI is available in English, Korean, Japanese, and Chinese
⚠️ Cons
- Self-hosted by design, so preparing and maintaining Node.js 22+, pnpm, and Git is your responsibility
- It is not a hosted SaaS, so there is no support desk or SLA
- More agents mean higher API and subscription costs plus heavier machine load
- The virtual office metaphor is easy to grasp but tends to be overkill if you only want to run a single task
- The project is evolving quickly, so behavior and configuration may change between versions
Comparison with Similar Services
| Criteria | Claw-Empire | Claude Squad | Vibe Kanban | Conductor |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Form factor | Web app (runs locally) | Terminal UI | Web app (runs locally) | Native macOS app |
| UI character | Pixel-art virtual office + kanban | tmux-based session list | Kanban board | Workspace list + diff viewer |
| Work isolation | Git worktree | Git worktree | Git worktree | Git worktree |
| Supported agents | Claude Code / Codex CLI / Gemini CLI / OpenCode and more | Claude Code / Codex / Gemini / Aider and more | Multiple coding agents | Claude Code / Codex |
| External integrations | Telegram, Discord, Slack, and more | ─ | ─ | ─ |
| License and price | Apache 2.0, free | Open source, free | Open source, free | Free |
All of them share the same core idea of isolating agent work with git worktrees. The difference is in presentation: choose Claude Squad if you want to stay inside the terminal, Conductor if you want a native macOS app that also handles diff review, and Claw-Empire if you want to split roles using an organizational metaphor and run longer workflows.
Who Is It For
- Developers who routinely run three or more AI coding agents in parallel and struggle to track progress
- People who want the agents themselves to take on roles such as planning, implementation, and review for longer pieces of work
- Anyone who prefers a setup that stays local rather than sending code to the cloud
- Teams that want to delegate not just development but research reports, meeting minutes, and slide decks
- Solo developers who want to check progress from Telegram or Discord while out and about
Summary
Claw-Empire is an open source office simulator that re-bundles an unwieldy collection of AI coding agents under the metaphor of a company. The pixel-art UI looks playful at first glance, but underneath it runs practical machinery: work isolation through git worktrees and progress tracking through a kanban board. If you can accept the overhead of self-hosting, it is a strong option for gaining visibility into multi-agent operations. Start by standing it up locally with Docker or the install script, connect one or two of the agents you already use, and see how it feels.