Emplo: Open Source Alternative to Claude Managed Agents

Emplo is the premier open source alternative to Claude Managed Agents and Anthropic's managed agent infrastructure. While proprietary solutions lock you into their ecosystem, Emplo provides a fully self-hosted, open source foundation for deploying 24/7 AI employees, enabling persistent, agentic workflows for autonomous task execution.

If you are looking for an alternative to Claude managed agents, an open source Claude managed agents implementation, or want to deploy autonomous AI employees that run around the clock, you have found the right repository.

As AI evolves from copilots to fully autonomous agents, this repository empowers founders and developers to deploy and manage 24/7 AI Employees seamlessly. Whether you want to experiment with agent routing, implement dynamic tool use, or launch autonomous systems, Emplo provides the modular building blocks to create and operate your own AI workforce around the clock.

Why choose Emplo?

• Open Source Alternative to Claude Managed Agents: A fully open foundation replacing proprietary managed agent infrastructure.
• 24/7 AI Employees & Autonomous Workforce: Infrastructure designed specifically for round-the-clock, background task execution without sleep.
• Managed Agents Architecture: Resilient agent loops capable of handling long-running, complex tasks identical to the latest hosted solutions.
• Agentic Workflows & Tool Use: Multi-step reasoning loops, dynamic tool calling (API integrations, database access), and structured state management.
• Self-Hosted & Private: Complete ownership of your data and agent state—no vendor lock-in.

Keywords for search: open source alternative to claude managed agents, alternative to claude managed agents, open source claude managed agents, claude managed agents alternative, 24/7 AI employees, autonomous AI agents, open source AI workforce, autonomous task execution, managed agents framework, self-hosted AI agents, Claude computer use alternative.

Note: This project is actively in development. Because it is a work in progress, some core features are still being built, and you might run into bugs.

If you're interested in following the development or want early access to upcoming updates, you can check out the waitlist at emplo.dev.

Quickstart

Get started in about 30 minutes by following these steps.

Preparation

1. Unpack the Archive

2. Switch to the project's root directory

3. Install PNPM if not already installed

npm i -g pnpm

3. Install the package dependencies of the whole monorepo

pnpm i

4. Copy the sample configurations

cp apps/dashboard/.env.example apps/dashboard/.env
cp packages/database/.env.example packages/database/.env

Services

Database

Install PostgreSQL

1. Install PostgreSQL via Homebrew, Chocolatey or download it from the website.

brew install postgresql

2. Add an initial user.

sudo -u postgres psql
CREATE USER postgres WITH PASSWORD 'password';
ALTER USER postgres WITH SUPERUSER;
\q

3. Update database packages/database/.env with your credentials.

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:password@localhost:5432/database?schema=public

4. Apply the database migrations.

pnpm --filter database migrate dev

5. Update also the dashboard apps/dashboard/.env with your credentials.

DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:password@localhost:5432/database?schema=public

Google Login (Optional)

1. Visit the Google Cloud Console.
2. Create an account if you don't have one already.
3. Navigate to APIs or click here
4. Configure the OAuth consent screen and add yourself as test user.
5. Click on Credentials, create new OAuth credentials and save those credentials.
6. Add the Authorized JavaScript origin to the credential settings.

http://localhost:3000

7. Add the Authorized redirect URI to the credential settings.

http://localhost:3000/api/auth/callback/google

8. Update dashboard apps/dashboard/.env with the created credentials.

AUTH_GOOGLE_CLIENT_ID=
AUTH_GOOGLE_CLIENT_SECRET=

Microsoft Login (Optional)

1. Visit the Azure Portal.
2. Create an account if you don't have one already.
3. Navigate to your Entra ID (Active Directory).
4. Register a new application with platform web.
5. Click on Authentication in the menu and add the redirect URIs

http://localhost:3000
http://localhost:3000/api/auth/callback/microsoft-entra-id

6. Under Certificates & Secrets, create a new client secret.
7. Update dashboard apps/dashboard/.env with the created secret.

AUTH_MICROSOFT_ENTRA_ID_CLIENT_ID=
AUTH_MICROSOFT_ENTRA_ID_CLIENT_SECRET=

SMTP Provider

The starter kit supports Nodemailer (SMTP) and Resend.

1. Choose an SMTP provider in packages/email/provider/index.ts.
2. Update dashboard apps/dashboard/.env with SMTP credentials.

EMAIL_FROM=

# Provider: NodeMailer
EMAIL_NODEMAILER_URL=

# Provider: Postmark
EMAIL_POSTMARK_SERVER_TOKEN=

# Provider: Resend
EMAIL_RESEND_API_KEY=

# Provider: SendGrid
EMAIL_SENDGRID_API_KEY=

For Gmail you need an app-specific password and set it up like this

EMAIL_NODEMAILER_URL=smtp://myemail@gmail.com:suyz yeba qtgv xrnp@smtp.gmail.com:465

We recommend Resend for the ease of use.

SMTP provider is mandatory for credentials login.

Dashboard Application

1. Start the dashboard application

pnpm --filter dashboard dev

2. Navigate to http://localhost:3000

You’re all set to start!

Troubleshoot

The generated Prisma types are not loaded.

Restart VS code (or the TS server).

It seems that I can't login

The database is probably not set up.

NPM throws an error

In the monorepo version npm is no longer supported. It's all pnpm now. The problem is that npm, yarn and pnpm have different workspace syntax and package hoisting patterns. Supporting all package managers is not possible in a monorepo setup and pnpm is the most popular one.

Note: Some features/functionalities might not work properly because this is still a work in progress.