What is OpenWorkBuddy?

This local-first AI office agent accepts a natural language request plus your materials, then autonomously plans, executes using tools and skills, verifies the output, and hands back real editable files — PPTX presentations, DOCX documents, XLSX spreadsheets, and HTML pages — that you can open and inspect. It works with many model providers for local and cloud models, and can also use Claude Code or Codex CLI installed on your machine as the execution engine. The agent includes a visual infinite canvas for image and video creation, short-drama workflows, scheduled tasks with IM notifications (Feishu, WeChat, WeCom, DingTalk, Telegram), MCP connector support, and a Markdown-based skill system for extensibility. It runs as a desktop app (Electron) on macOS, Windows, and Linux, or can be deployed to a server via Docker for team use with multi-tenancy, RBAC, quotas, and audit logging. Personal non-commercial, academic, and non-profit use is free under the PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0 license; commercial use requires a paid license. No telemetry, no forced updates, and API keys stay in your local config.json.

Should you self-host OpenWorkBuddy?

OpenWorkBuddy scores 48/100 on selfhost.directory (how scoring works) and ranks #52 of 120 in AI Assistant. It has 363 GitHub stars.

It shipped 8 stable releases in the past year. The latest, v0.17.5, came out on 27 October 2026.

Setup is moderate: expect some configuration beyond a single command. It is Other-licensed and written mostly in JavaScript.

Its closest alternative on selfhost.directory is AionUi (81/100, 33 846 stars). It scores higher overall, so compare the two before you pick. See OpenWorkBuddy vs AionUi side by side.