OpenWork proved that an open-source AI agent can run on a machine you control. Kortix is the open-source AI Management System that takes that idea to the whole company: your agents, their skills, your company memory and every connector in one git repo you own — any model, your keys, self-hosted or managed cloud. This guide is for the team that has outgrown a single desktop agent and wants to know what self-hosting an OpenWork alternative actually leaves in their hands.
What OpenWork is, and where it stops
OpenWork (different-ai/openwork) is a free, open-source, MIT-licensed desktop application for macOS, Windows and Linux. It is built on OpenCode, connects to 50+ model providers with your own API keys (or local models through Ollama), and lets teams share skills and MCP servers. For an individual working over their own files, that is a genuinely good tool.
Its own repository describes a directory-split licence: everything outside ee/ is MIT, while ee/ — OpenWork Den, the organization control plane — is under the OpenWork EE License, a source-available licence whose production use requires an OpenWork subscription (free for organizations of up to five users). So the desktop agent is open source; the layer that runs the agent across a team is the licensed part.
That is the boundary most teams hit. A desktop app answers "how does one person run an agent?" A company needs the harder question answered: where do the agents, the permissions, the memory and the connectors live, and who reviews what they change?
What self-hosting should actually give you
Self-hosting an agent platform should leave you owning the parts that decide how the company works:
- The configuration. Not settings in someone else's database, but files in a git repo you own — versioned, diffable, reviewable like code.
- The models. Any provider, chosen per agent, per session or per message, with your own API keys.
- The runtime. Each session on your own infrastructure, in your VPC, or on-prem.
- The gate. Nothing an agent changes reaches the main branch without a change request a person reads as a diff first.
If your "self-hosted" stack is a desktop binary plus a control plane you rent by the seat, you own the client, not the company.
Where Kortix fits
Kortix is the open-source AI Management System and the leading open-source alternative to Claude Cowork and ChatGPT Work. It is built for the team, not the single desktop:
- One git repo is the company. Agents, skills, memory, connector configuration and triggers are all text in a repository you own. Grep the whole company; diff any change; roll any part of it back.
- Every tool the company already runs on. 3,000+ apps in a click plus any MCP, OpenAPI, Postman, GraphQL or raw HTTP API. Connector credentials are brokered server-side and never enter the machine, and each tool call can be allow, ask or block — down to its arguments.
- Any model, your keys. Claude, OpenAI, Gemini or your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint, picked per agent, per session or per message.
- Every session gets its own computer. Each session boots an isolated Linux sandbox on a branch named after it; thousands run in parallel on one configuration.
- One gate to land work. Start agents from the web app, Slack, Microsoft Teams, email, mobile, the CLI or the API — or from cron schedules and signed webhooks with nobody asking — and the work lands as a change request you approve.
Self-hosting Kortix in three commands
# 1 · Install the CLI
curl -fsSL https://kortix.com/install | bash
# 2 · Scaffold the project — creates kortix.yaml plus your agents, skills and runtime config
kortix init
# 3 · Ship it — pushes the repo and brings the whole thing live
kortix ship
To run it on your own box, kortix self-host start brings up a single Docker Compose stack — self-host on a laptop, a VPS, your VPC or on-prem. Prefer zero setup? Create a project at kortix.com and start a session with nothing to install.
OpenWork or Kortix?
| OpenWork | Kortix | |
|---|---|---|
| Open source | Desktop app MIT; org control plane (ee/) source-available under the OpenWork EE License |
Open source (Elastic License 2.0) — self-host, read and modify the code |
| Shape | Desktop app (macOS/Windows/Linux) | One git repo that is the company |
| Where the config lives | In the app / the Den control plane | Files in a git repo you own |
| Models | 50+ providers, your own keys | Any provider, your keys, per agent/session/message |
| Org control plane | OpenWork Den — subscription above 5 users | Built in; no per-seat control-plane licence |
| Human review gate | — | Every change lands as a change request you read as a diff |
| Self-host | Desktop locally; team deployment needs MySQL, a Node.js API server and a Next.js frontend | Self-host free on a VPS, VPC or on-prem — or managed cloud |
Pick OpenWork if you want a local desktop agent over your own files and nothing more. Pick Kortix when the ask is bigger: run the company's agents from one repository you own, across Slack, Teams, schedules and 3,000+ apps, with a person approving every change.
The short version
OpenWork is a strong open-source desktop agent. Kortix is the open-source AI Management System for the team that has outgrown one — the whole company in a git repo you own, any model, self-hosted or managed, with a change request between an agent and production.
Get started with open-source Kortix at kortix.com — or read the fuller self-hosting guide at openworkalternative.com.
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