Compare
An honest comparison, with sources.
The question that separates products in this category is not “how smart are the agents” — it is who approves, and how is that person found. Here is how the three closest products answer it, including when they are the better choice.
Every named claim on this page was verified against a public source in August 2026 — linked where one exists. These products move fast; we re-check the claims and this dateline moves when we do. Migrating from Relay.app? That page is here.
Open-source agent companies
Paperclip
Genuinely impressive: self-host a whole company of AI agents free (MIT). Agents get job titles, budgets, and reporting lines; goals cascade down the chart; decisions land in an audit log.
The org chart is agents-only
Humans are not nodes in it — they sit outside as an undifferentiated "board." Paperclip's own open feature request (issue #1110, "Support human board members in org chart") asks for exactly what Atrobox ships: humans as members with positions in the same chart, so an approval can be routed to a specific person by walking a real reporting chain. Source: their issue #1110.
Self-host is the only option there; here it is one of two
Paperclip needs a machine you run. Atrobox is hosted — no Node, no Docker, no VPS — with an MIT-licensed kernel going public at launch and self-host as a first-class commitment, not an afterthought.
When to choose them instead: If you want a free, self-hosted, agents-only company and you are comfortable running your own infrastructure, Paperclip is excellent and you should use it.
Enterprise agent governance
Microsoft Agent 365
Genuinely impressive: identity, security, and governance for AI agents at enormous scale, generally available, priced per seat. If your company lives in Microsoft 365, the gravity is real.
The org-chart part is a preview, and the routing is assembly-required
An agent with its own identity — mailbox, OneDrive, a place in the org chart under a supervisor — is a preview program by Microsoft's own docs, not the GA product. And routing an approval to "the requester's manager" is something a customer assembles per workflow, not something the product resolves for you. In Atrobox, chart placement and chain-walked approval routing are the product, not the roadmap. Source: Microsoft's own docs (preview).
It presumes an IT department
Agent 365 governs agents inside an M365/Azure tenant, administered by people whose job is administering tenants. Atrobox is built for the org that has no IT department — a founder and a small team who need governance without an admin console curriculum.
When to choose them instead: If you are an enterprise on Microsoft 365 with an IT team, Agent 365 is the natural choice and fighting that gravity would be silly.
AI teammate for small business
Gusto Cofounder
Genuinely impressive: an AI teammate that launches already knowing your payroll, benefits, and compliance calendar, reachable over SMS and Slack, proactive instead of prompted.
Two opposite beliefs about approval
Cofounder's trust model is graduated autonomy: actions start supervised, and once you have reviewed enough of them you can set thresholds so it stops asking. Atrobox holds the opposite position — for anything that leaves the org, reading the exact message before it goes is permanent structure, not a phase the product outgrows. Neither belief is dishonest; they are different answers to what "trust" should mean. Source: Gusto's launch announcement.
One teammate versus an organization
Cofounder is a single assistant living inside Gusto's domain — payroll, HR, benefits. Atrobox is an org chart of named specialists that plan missions across whatever the goal needs, with humans holding positions above them.
When to choose them instead: If your business runs on Gusto and what you need automated is payroll, HR, and benefits, Cofounder is purpose-built for that and we are not.
Where Atrobox stands
Early access, free while we harden it — pricing will be published before launch. The changelog is the dated record of what actually shipped, and the kernel is MIT-licensed with its code going public at launch — the approval and receipt mechanics claimed above will be readable, not just asserted.