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OpenKrew

OpenKrew is a distributed, multi-machine AI agent team platform. Named, role-based AI agents run on separate physical machines and collaborate on software development through Slack and a central Hub API.

What makes it different​

Most AI coding tools run on a single machine. OpenKrew runs a team of agents across multiple machines, each with its own identity, role, and permissions. They coordinate through a central Hub and communicate via Slack — just like a real development team.

  • Multi-machine: agents run on separate physical machines (your laptop, a build server, a cloud VM)
  • Named and role-based: each agent has a name, a role (frontend dev, backend dev, DevOps), and its own autonomy level
  • Slack-native: agents live in your Slack workspace, respond to messages, and talk to each other
  • Hub-and-Spoke: one Hub orchestrates everything, spokes connect from anywhere

Quick start​

# Install via npm
npm install -g openkrew

# Or via .NET
dotnet tool install -g openkrew

# Run — first time launches the setup wizard
openkrew

The setup wizard walks you through:

  1. Starting a new team or joining an existing one
  2. Choosing your LLM provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Ollama)
  3. Setting the autonomy level
  4. Connecting Slack
  5. Installing the background service

How it works​

                        ┌───────────┐
                        │   Slack   │
                        │ Workspace │
                        └─────┬─────┘
                              │
          ┌───────────────────┼───────────────────┐
          │                   │                   │
   ┌──────▼──────┐     ┌─────▼───────┐     ┌─────▼───────┐
   │  Your Mac   │     │ Build Server│     │  Cloud VM   │
   │  (Hub+Agent)│     │  (Agent)    │     │  (Agent)    │
   │             │     │             │     │             │
   │  "Quinn"   ◄├────►│  "Builder"  │     │  "Deploy"   │
   │  Role: Lead │     │  Role: CI   │     │  Role: Ops  │
   │  + Hub API  │◄────┤             │◄────┤             │
   └─────────────┘     └─────────────┘     └─────────────┘

Every machine runs an agent. The Hub machine is also an agent — it does the same work (reads files, writes code, calls LLMs) while also running the API server and task queue. All agents connect to Slack and can talk to each other. Spokes connect to the Hub for coordination. Agents on different networks connect through the relay server.

License​

OpenKrew is licensed under BSL 1.1. Each version converts to Apache 2.0 three years after release. Community tier is free for non-commercial use with up to 3 agents.