[opensourcedex]

OpenHands is a free, open source ai assisted coding project written in TypeScript and released under MIT. It has 88,312 GitHub stars, 11,598 forks and 713 open issues, and was last pushed 5 hours ago. On this registry it ranks #3 of 24 tracked projects in AI Assisted Coding, with 5 head-to-head comparisons available. It gained 651 stars over the last 6 tracked days.

OpenHands — Autonomous coding agents that complete real engineering tasks

What is OpenHands?

What it is

OpenHands is an open-source platform that provides a self-hosted control center—Agent Canvas—for managing and orchestrating autonomous AI coding agents. It lives in the developer tools and AI-assisted coding ecosystem, designed to turn local or remote agents into a persistent, automated engineering team. The platform supports multiple agent backends and integrates with third-party services to enable scheduled or event-driven automation workflows.

It solves the problem of fragmented, ephemeral agent usage by offering a unified interface to run, monitor, and connect agents—whether OpenHands’ own agent or third-party tools like Claude Code, Codex, or Gemini—across diverse environments. Instead of manually triggering agents per session, users deploy them as always-on services that execute tasks like issue decomposition, report generation, or dependency updates without user intervention.

Key capabilities

  • Runs agents locally, in Docker, on VMs, or in cloud infrastructure via configurable backends
  • Supports switching between multiple agent backends from a single Agent Canvas frontend
  • Enables creation of automations that integrate with Slack, GitHub, Linear, and other services
  • Allows scheduling of automations or triggering via webhooks
  • Accepts any LLM through configurable profiles (no vendor lock-in)
  • Works with any agent implementing the Agent-Client Protocol (ACP)
  • Provides both local and cloud-hosted deployment options (OpenHands Cloud / Enterprise)

Who uses it and how

  • Developers run agents locally on laptops or dedicated machines for personal task automation
  • Teams share an Agent Server for collaborative tasks like code review or dependency management
  • Engineers deploy agents on cloud VMs to run long-lived automations and respond to external events (e.g., GitHub issues, Slack messages)
  • Organizations self-host the backend behind their firewall while using cloud-hosted UI for management

Getting started

Install via npm install -g @openhands/agent-canvas and run agent-canvas to start the full local stack; or use Docker with a configured PROJECTS_PATH volume. OpenHands Cloud or Enterprise options are available for hosted deployment.

When to use it — and when not to

Use OpenHands when you need a self-hosted, multi-backend orchestration layer for AI agents with strong integration support for CI/CD and communication tools. Avoid it if you require a fully managed SaaS with no infrastructure responsibility, or if you cannot tolerate the overhead of maintaining a backend (e.g., database, storage, SMTP for notifications). Security-sensitive environments must harden the self-hosted deployment as documented.

project readme (upstream, from github) — read inline

OpenHands logo

Agent Canvas

The self-hosted developer control center for coding agents and automations.

Run OpenHands, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, or any ACP-compatible agent across local, remote, and cloud backends.

Project status beta CI status npm version Documentation Join us on Slack

Quickstart | Docs | Self-Hosting | ACP Agents | Automations | Slack

Agent Canvas automation preview

OpenHands Agent Canvas turns your coding agents into a self-hosted, always-on engineering team. It's a developer control center for starting conversations and automating everyday tasks — like generating reports that publish to Slack or automatically decomposing GitHub issues into tasks.

It runs locally on your machine by default, but can connect to multiple “agent backends”, e.g. running agents in Docker containers, on VMs, or within your company infrastructure. You can optionally choose to run agents on OpenHands Cloud or OpenHands Enterprise infrastructure.

Agent Canvas runs the open source OpenHands agent out-of-the-box, but can use any third-party agent like Claude Code and Codex.
Self-host your way Run agents locally, in Docker, on VMs, or anywhere you can run an agent server backend
Switch between different backends Switch between local, remote, and cloud agents without losing focus
Create automations Create automations and workflows that integrate with Slack, GitHub, Linear, and more. Run on a schedule or in response to webhook events
Integrate with the tools you use Connect your automations with third-party services like Slack, GitHub, Notion, and more to automate workflows
Bring your own model Use with any LLM
Use with any agent Use with OpenHands, Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, or any agent with Agent-Client Protocol (ACP).

If you have questions or feedback, please open a GitHub issue or join the #proj-agent-canvas channel in Slack.

Quickstart

You can install OpenHands to run agents on any machine: on your laptop, on a dedicated computer like a Mac Mini, or on a server in the cloud.

The most powerful way to run OpenHands is on a server in the cloud. This allows your agents to continue running even when your laptop is shut, and makes it easier to trigger your agents through third-party services like Slack, GitHub, and Datadog. See SELF_HOSTING.md for details, especially with respect to security hardening.

Notably, you can run the backend in multiple different environments, and switch between them from the same Agent Canvas frontend. E.g. you can share an Agent Server with your team for agents doing code review and dependency updates, then have your personal agents running on your laptop.

Option 1: Without a Sandbox

[!WARNING] This runs the agent-server directly on the machine you're installing on — the agent will have full access to your filesystem!

Prerequisites: Node.js 22.12.x or later, uv

npm install -g @openhands/agent-canvas
agent-canvas

The agent-canvas command starts the full local stack by default. You can also split it when you want to run pieces separately:

agent-canvas --frontend-only  # static frontend + ingress only
agent-canvas --backend-only   # agent server + automation backend + ingress only

Option 2: With a Docker Sandbox

Prerequisites:

  • Docker: Docker Desktop on macOS/Windows, or Docker Engine/Docker Desktop on Linux.
  • A host directory for PROJECTS_PATH containing the project folders you want the agent to access. Create it before starting the container.

macOS / Linux:

export PROJECTS_PATH="$HOME/projects"  # directory containing your project folders
mkdir -p "$PROJECTS_PATH" "$HOME/.openhands"

docker run -it --rm \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -v "$HOME/.openhands:/home/openhands/.openhands" \
  -v "${PROJECTS_PATH}:/projects" \
  ghcr.io/openhands/agent-canvas:1.17.0 # x-release-please-version

Windows (PowerShell / Windows Terminal): See README.windows.md for the equivalent commands.

The agent will be able to access any project under PROJECTS_PATH.

Option 3: From Source

[!WARNING] This runs the agent-server directly on the machine you're installing on — the agent will have full access to your filesystem!

Prerequisites: Node.js 22.12.x or later, npm, uv (for running the agent server via uvx)

git clone https://github.com/OpenHands/OpenHands.git
cd OpenHands
npm install
npm run dev

Access the UI at http://localhost:8000 for the npm/source launchers, or http://localhost:8000/canvas for the Docker image. You can add additional backends directly from the UI.

Architecture

Agent Canvas is powered by the OpenHands Agent Server, a REST API for running multiple agents on a single machine. Each Agent Server runs on a single host/port; the Agent Canvas can connect to multiple Agent Servers and easily flip between them.

You can run an Agent Server anywhere:

  • Directly on your laptop (be careful!)
  • On a dedicated machine like a Mac Mini
  • On a virtual machine in the cloud
  • Inside OpenHands Cloud (our commercial offering)

The Agent Server is often paired with an Automation Server, which lets you set up agents that run on a schedule or in response to events.

image

Repository boundaries

Agent Canvas is part of a multi-repository OpenHands system. Changes should go to the repository that owns the behavior:

Repository Responsibility
OpenHands/OpenHands Agent Canvas frontend, user-fa

readme truncated — read the full docs on github

Frequently asked questions

Is OpenHands free to use?

OpenHands is open source under the MIT licence. There is no licence fee and no seat count — you can self-host it or, where the project offers one, pay a vendor for a managed version instead.

What does OpenHands do?

Autonomous coding agents that complete real engineering tasks

What is OpenHands written in?

OpenHands is primarily written in TypeScript. Its source is publicly available at https://github.com/openhands/openhands, and it has 88,312 GitHub stars.