How to Deploy Paperclip on a VPS with ServerAvatar

If you’re looking to deploy Paperclip for your team, a VPS gives you full control over your AI infrastructure. Paperclip is an open-source platform that lets you create AI agents, define goals, and connect LLM providers like Anthropic Claude and OpenAI, all from a clean dashboard. The catch is that the hosted version stores your data in Paperclip’s cloud. For companies with strict data privacy requirements, or teams that simply want complete ownership of their infrastructure, self-hosting is the better choice. In this guide, you’ll learn how to deploy Paperclip on a VPS quickly and securely using ServerAvatar.

This guide walks you through deploying Paperclip on a VPS running Ubuntu, behind a custom domain, with HTTPS, a proper PostgreSQL database, and authentication required for every user.

ServerAvatar handles the heavy lifting on server provisioning, application deployment, and SSL certificate management, so you can focus on the setup itself rather than wrestling with DNS records and firewall rules.

TL;DR

• Paperclip is an open-source AI agent management platform with a web UI
• Self-hosting gives you full data ownership and keeps agent data on your own infrastructure
• ServerAvatar simplifies VPS provisioning, application deployment, and SSL management
• PostgreSQL 17 is required, Paperclip’s Drizzle ORM doesn’t support MySQL or MariaDB
• Paperclip listens on 127.0.0.1:3100 only, Apache handles all public traffic through a reverse proxy
• A clean install on a fresh Ubuntu VPS takes roughly 15–20 minutes

What is Paperclip?

Paperclip is an open-source platform that gives teams a web-based control panel for AI agents. You can define agents, assign them goals, manage workloads, and connect your own LLM API keys, without having to build your own tooling from scratch.

Explore the hosted version at paperclip.ing, and access the official documentation and GitHub repository to learn more.

Going the self-hosted route changes the picture significantly:

The self-hosted approach makes the most sense when data residency, internal privacy policies, or avoiding another SaaS dependency are driving your decisions. If any of those resonate, keep reading.

Who this guide is for: Teams that need full control over agent management data, companies with compliance requirements, and developers comfortable on the command line. Budget about 15–20 minutes for a clean install on a fresh VPS.

Architecture Overview

Before diving into the steps, it helps to understand how everything connects.

 ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
 │                   Your VPS                   │
 │                                              │
 │                                              │
Internet ─────────────── Apache :443 (SSL) ─────┼──────► Paperclip :3100
(https://paperclip.example.com)   │             │               │
                                  │ Apache :80──┘               │
                                  │                             │
                                  │   PostgreSQL :5432          │
 └──────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Here’s what each piece does:

• Apache (443) – Terminates SSL, handles Let’s Encrypt certificates, receives all public traffic
• Apache (80) – Catches plain HTTP requests and redirects them to HTTPS
• Paperclip (3100) – The agent management UI that is tied exclusively to localhost, and never directly exposed to the internet
• PostgreSQL (5432) – Stores all agent data, configurations, and user information, also localhost-only

Traffic always flows: Client >> Apache (SSL) >> Paperclip (localhost) >> PostgreSQL (localhost). Nothing is directly reachable from the internet except Apache on ports 80 and 443.

Why this design matters

Paperclip is intentionally designed to sit behind a reverse proxy. It binds to 127.0.0.1:3100, which means it cannot be reached directly from the internet under any misconfiguration. Apache handles all SSL complexity. PostgreSQL is on localhost too, so you don’t need to open firewall rules for the database. “systemd” takes care of restarts if the process crashes or the server reboots.

This layered approach means you get a production-ready setup where each component only communicates with the ones it actually needs to.

Step 1: Create Your Server with ServerAvatar

Log into your ServerAvatar account and create a new server. If you already have a server, ServerAvatar makes the process straightforward, you can connect your server from any cloud provider with ServerAvatar using the Direct Method installation guide.

You can also connect your cloud provider account from DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode, Hetzner, and Amazon Lightsail to directly deploy a server using ServerAvatar.

During the server creation workflow, you’ll see an option to Install Node.js, enable this toggle. Paperclip runs on Node.js, and having ServerAvatar install it during provisioning saves you a manual step afterward.

Step 2: Create the Application in ServerAvatar

After your server is live, create a new application in ServerAvatar.

• Open the server panel by clicking on the server dashboard icon.
• Navigate to the Application section from the left sidebar.
• Click on the Create an Application button.

• Enter your application name.
• Select your domain from Primary and Test. ServerAvatar lets you deploy applications on a temporary test domain first, useful for verifying your setup before pointing production traffic at it.
• Enter your domain name.
• Choose Custom PHP Application as the deployment method.

• Click on Show Advance Options. Enter New User and give Username and Password.
• Select your PHP Version as 8.2
• Click on Create Application.

ServerAvatar will create the application structure and set a document root. You’ll deploy Paperclip into this environment. Refer to the custom PHP deployment guide for further details.

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