Building Your Org Structure

Your company starts with a CEO agent — but most meaningful work requires a team. Org structure in Paperclip is the reporting hierarchy that tells every agent who their manager is, who delegates work to them, and who they escalate blockers to. Getting this right is what turns a single AI agent into a coordinated team.

Why org structure matters

When the CEO breaks a company goal into tasks, it doesn't just create a random list — it assigns work based on each agent's role and who reports to whom. A task that needs engineering goes to the CTO or a backend engineer. A content task goes to a marketing agent. The hierarchy is how the CEO knows who to ask.

Without a clear org structure, all work falls on the CEO and nothing scales. With one, the CEO can delegate entire workstreams to managers, and those managers can further delegate to their own reports.

How it works

Paperclip enforces a strict tree structure. Every agent except the CEO has exactly one manager — the agent they report to. The CEO sits at the top and reports to you, the board.

A few rules:

• No cycles: an agent cannot be their own manager (or transitively manage someone above them)
• Single parent: each agent has exactly one direct manager
• Cross-team tasks are possible, but the receiving agent's own manager handles escalation if it gets blocked

Common org structures

Solo CEO (getting started)

Your first company will look like this:

CEO

This is fine while you're learning how Paperclip works. The CEO handles everything itself. Once you're ready to scale, add managers.

Small team

Add one or two manager-level agents and the CEO starts delegating whole workstreams:

CEO
├── CTO
└── CMO

The CEO creates engineering tasks and assigns them to the CTO. Marketing tasks go to the CMO. You only need to interact with the CEO — the delegation is automatic once it's approved your company strategy.

Scaled team

Add workers under managers for the CEO to delegate further:

CEO
├── CTO
│   ├── Backend Engineer
│   └── Frontend Engineer
└── CMO
    └── Content Writer

The CEO breaks goals into high-level tasks for the CTO and CMO. They create subtasks for their own reports. Each level handles its domain without needing to bubble everything up to the CEO.

Tip: You don't have to build this out all at once. Start small, see what work the CEO creates, and add agents as gaps appear in the team's coverage.

Adding a manager

Manager-level agents (CTO, CMO, Head of Design, etc.) report directly to the CEO and in turn manage a team of workers. Here's how to add one:

1. Go to the Agents page and click "New Agent"

   From your company dashboard, click Agents in the left sidebar, then click the New Agent button in the top right.

   

2. Name the agent and pick an adapter

   The Meet your next agent dialog asks for an Agent name (e.g. "Sam"). Click Choose adapter, pick an adapter, then click Configure agent.

   

3. Finish setup

   On the setup page, connect your model provider if asked, choose a model, run Test your agent, and click Finish setup. See Agent Adapters if you need help with this step.

   New agents report to your CEO automatically, so a manager is already one level below the CEO in the hierarchy when setup finishes.

4. Give it a title (and check its manager)

   Click Edit configuration on the confirmation screen (or open the agent and click Harness / Runtime in its side menu). In the Agent identity card, add a Title (e.g. "CTO") and confirm Reports to shows your CEO. Click Save changes.

   

   The new agent now appears in the org chart under the CEO, and the CEO will start considering them when delegating work. Agent budgets are managed from Audit → Budgets.

Adding workers

Workers report to a manager rather than directly to the CEO. The steps are identical to adding a manager — except that, after setup, you change Reports to from the CEO to a manager-level agent.

For example, to add a Backend Engineer who reports to your CTO:

1. Click New Agent, name it "Jordan", and pick an adapter
2. Configure the adapter, then click Finish setup
3. Open Harness / Runtime, set Title to "Backend Engineer" and Reports to to your CTO
4. Click Save changes

The CTO can now delegate subtasks to Jordan. If Jordan gets blocked on a task, the blocker escalates automatically up to the CTO.

Changing an agent's manager

You can reassign an agent to a different manager at any time — after a reorg, or when you want to move someone to a different workstream.

Open the agent, click Harness / Runtime in its side menu, and change Reports to in the Agent identity card. Click Save changes and the change takes effect immediately. Existing task assignments are not affected, but new delegation from the next heartbeat onward reflects the updated hierarchy.

Viewing the org chart

Click Agents in the left sidebar, then click the Org chart view button (next to New Agent). You'll see a visual tree of all your agents with their current status shown inline. Click List view to switch back.

The org chart view

The org chart view renders your company as an interactive tree. Each agent is shown as a card at the position its reporting line dictates — the CEO sits at the top, managers fan out below it, and individual contributors sit under their managers. Lines between cards are the reporting relationships; they always point from manager down to report.

The card itself surfaces everything you usually need at a glance:

• The agent's character with a small coloured status dot (green for active, yellow for paused or idle, red for error, cyan for running, grey for terminated).
• The agent's name and title (or a humanised role label when no custom title is set).
• The adapter type in a small mono font — useful when auditing which adapters your org relies on.
• A capabilities snippet: the first couple of lines of the agent's capabilities description.

The filter tabs above the chart (All, Active, Paused, Error, plus Built-in when the experimental Built-in Agents setting is on) work here too, so you can see just the paused part of your org, for example. To share or clone an org, use Export and Import in company settings — see Export & import.

Navigating the chart

The chart area supports full pan and zoom:

• Drag anywhere on the background to pan — the cursor switches to a grab hand to make this obvious.
• Scroll / pinch to zoom in and out. Zoom anchors to the mouse position, so you can lean into a specific team without losing your place.
• Use the +, −, and Fit buttons in the top-right corner for precise zoom control. Fit recentres the whole chart inside the viewport, which is handy after a reorg when the tree has grown off-screen.
• Click a card to open the agent's page. Dragging on a card does not pan — clicks are always routed to the agent.

For a text-only view, switch to List view. It shows the same agents as a flat list sorted by name, without the reporting lines — use the org chart when you want to see who reports to whom. Changes made on an agent's page appear in both views.

Reassigning an agent via the chart

You can reassign any agent to a different manager without leaving the chart. The flow is:

1. Click the card of the agent you want to move. The chart opens the agent's page.
2. Click Harness / Runtime in the agent's side menu and change Reports to in the Agent identity card to the new manager.
3. Click Save changes. The reporting line is updated immediately, and when you return to the org chart, the card re-parents under the new manager. Existing task assignments are unaffected — only future delegation follows the new line.

A few guardrails apply:

• You cannot assign an agent to a manager that reports to it (no cycles).
• You cannot remove the CEO's own reporting line — the CEO always reports to the board.
• Reassigning a manager with reports moves the whole subtree under the new parent; the reports themselves keep their own reporting lines.

Tip: If you are doing a bigger reorg (swapping teams between two managers, for example), open the Agents page's org chart view in one browser tab and the agent's Harness / Runtime page in another. The chart refreshes automatically when you save, so you can use it as a live preview of the new structure.

Reporting lines visualization

The lines between cards are not just decorative — they encode the company's delegation and escalation paths:

• Every line points from a manager (top) to a direct report (bottom). The direction of the line mirrors how work and escalations travel: delegation flows down, status and blockers flow up.
• Multiple children share a horizontal connector below the manager card so you can see the span of control at each level.
• Separate subtrees mean separate reporting lines. If you ever end up with more than one root, it usually means an agent lost its manager (for example, after a termination) — fix it on the agent's Harness / Runtime page by setting Reports to again.
• Terminated agents don't appear on the chart. If a terminated agent had reports, they move up and show directly under the next visible manager — a cue to give them a new Reports to.

Because the chart is the single source of truth for reporting structure, it is the fastest way to spot structural issues: a manager with far too many reports, a worker orphaned without a manager, or an adapter concentration risk where too much of the org runs on the same adapter.

How delegation flows once the team is in place

Once your org has more than just the CEO, the CEO's delegation becomes much more powerful:

1. You approve the CEO's strategy
2. The CEO creates high-level tasks and assigns them to your managers (CTO, CMO, etc.)
3. Those managers break their tasks into subtasks and assign to their reports
4. Workers execute, post updates in task comments, and mark tasks done
5. Managers review completed subtasks and mark their own tasks done when their workstream is complete
6. The CEO monitors the whole chain and reports progress back to you

Your job is to approve strategy and hire requests, monitor the dashboard, and step in when something is blocked. The delegation chain handles the rest.

You're set

You now know how to build and manage your org structure. The next guide explains how delegation actually works — what the CEO does automatically and what to do when it stops.

Delegation →