Personal agent runtimes
Always-on, self-hosted agents you run as a daemon and talk to from chat apps: gateway runtimes, second brains, and self-improving assistants. The agent as a product you operate, not a library you build with.
| # | Project | Stars | Tier | OSS | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | OpenClaw typescriptmulti-agent | 385k | complex | ✅ | Self-hosted, always-on personal agent (formerly Clawdbot/Moltbot): a gateway + event-loop runtime that treats messages, heartbeats, crons, and webhooks as one input queue, persists state to local files, and lives in your chat apps (WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack, Discord). 13,700+ community skills; the fastest-growing repo in GitHub history. |
| 2 | Hermes memorypythonprovider-agnostic | 224k | slightly complex | ✅ | Nous Research's self-improving agent: a learning loop turns experience into reusable skills, builds a persistent user model across sessions, and checkpoints state to disk with rollback; lean enough for a $5 VPS, driven from chat, and model-agnostic (Nous Portal, OpenRouter, OpenAI, or any endpoint). |
| 3 | nanobot mcpmemorylocalpython | 46.5k | mostly simple | ❓ | Ultra-lightweight, self-hosted personal agent framework: the **harness** is a Python daemon wiring tools, memory, and MCP into chat/webhook front ends (Telegram, Discord, web); minimal footprint alternative to heavier personal-runtime stacks. |
| 4 | CowAgent memorypython | 46.3k | slightly complex | ❓ | Self-hosted **harness** (formerly chatgpt-on-wechat) that plans tasks, runs tools/skills, and self-evolves via memory; multi-model, multi-channel (WeChat, Telegram, etc.), one-line install. |
| 5 | Khoj python | 36.2k | complex | ✅ | Self-hostable "AI second brain": answers over your docs and the web, custom agents, scheduled automations, and multi-client reach (web, Obsidian, Emacs, WhatsApp). A personal-agent harness with retrieval at the core. |
| 6 | Eliza memorymulti-agenttypescript | 18.9k | complex | ✅ | Open "agentic operating system" (elizaOS): persistent multi-agent runtime with character files, a plugin ecosystem, and social/platform integrations — the harness behind a large share of autonomous social agents. |
| 7 | Agent Zero memorymulti-agentbrowsersandboxpython | 18.7k | slightly complex | ❓ | Organic, prompt-defined personal agent framework: hierarchical sub-agents, persistent memory, browser and code tools, and self-modifying behavior; runs in Docker with a web UI. |
| 8 | OpenHarness (HKUDS) memorymulti-agent | 15.2k | complex | ✅ | Open agent harness with a built-in personal agent ("Ohmo") that runs across Feishu, Slack, Telegram, and Discord; core tool-use, skills, memory, multi-agent coordination with auto-compaction for multi-day sessions. |
| 9 | AIlice sandboxpython | 1.4k | slightly complex | ✅ | Fully autonomous general-purpose agent; one binary, Docker-ready, for when you want "set goal and walk away" without a framework. |
| 10 | Talon mcpmemoryclitypescript | 71 | slightly complex | ✅ | Multi-platform personal agent living in Telegram, Discord, Teams, and the terminal. The **harness** is a pluggable-backend loop (Claude, Kilo, OpenCode, Codex, OpenAI Agents) with full MCP tool access and persistent background agents (Goals, Heartbeat, Dream); the chat apps are shells. |