agent-canvas

Warning

This project is in alpha phase. It may be vibecoded, untested, or out of date. Learn more.

OpenHands is a platform for orchestrating coding agents across different environments. You can:

• ⌨️ prompt agents manually
• 🕐 run agents on a schedule
• ⚡ trigger agents automatically — e.g. from Slack, GitHub, or Datadog.

Agents can run anywhere:

• 🧑‍💻 on your laptop
• 🖥️ on a remote virtual machine
• ☁️ in our hosted cloud
• 🏢 or inside your company’s infrastructure

The same Agent Canvas frontend can swap between each of these environments, so you can see everything in one place.

OpenHands works with any agent harness (e.g. Claude Code, Codex) or connect directly to an LLM (e.g. Anthropic, OpenAI, Gemini, Mistral, Minimax, Kimi).

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.

Warning

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

Option 1: Docker

docker pull ghcr.io/openhands/agent-canvas:1.0.0-alpha.6

export PROJECTS_PATH=~/projects  # directory containing your project folders

docker run -it --rm \
  -p 8000:8000 \
  -v ~/.openhands:/home/openhands/.openhands \
  -v ${PROJECTS_PATH}:/projects \
  ghcr.io/openhands/agent-canvas:1.0.0-alpha.6

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

Option 2: NPM

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

npm install -g @openhands/agent-canvas

export PROJECTS_PATH=~/projects  # directory containing your project folders

agent-canvas

Option 3: From Source

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

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

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Access the UI at http://localhost:8000. 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.

More documentation

For contributor and developer workflows, including frontend-only mode, mock mode, environment variables, and build/test commands, see DEVELOPMENT.md.