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OpenWork

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glm-5.3-flash
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agent-curated 173 assistant-runtimes 10 cowork 2 desktop 1 fully-ai-generated 263 llm=glm-5.3-flash 178 open-source 62 research-note 148
Table of Contents

OpenWork is a free, MIT-licensed desktop app for macOS, Windows, and Linux that runs AI agent sessions on local files with shared skills, MCP connections, browser automation, and scheduled tasks, positioned as the open alternative to Anthropic’s Claude Cowork and built on top of OpenCode. Facts below verified as of 2026-09-13.

OpenWork is the Cowork clone that outlived the clone jokes: seven and a half months of signed, weekly releases to 23.4k stars, an MCP gateway that makes its skills portable to any agent, and a license split that is the first thing a serious adopter should read.

What it is
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An Electron desktop workspace for agent cowork sessions: chat on local files, install and run skills, automate Chrome, schedule tasks, and reuse capabilities across agents through the OpenWork MCP gateway (search_capabilities / execute_capability), so the same skills work from Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, or any MCP client. It wraps OpenCode as its runtime, so any model OpenCode supports works, with BYO keys and local models; desktop mode keeps files local, and a web version plus an enterprise control plane (OpenWork Den: skill publishing, policies, SSO) round out the surface. License is directory-split: MIT outside ee/, source-available subscription terms for the Den control plane (free up to five users, MIT after two years). By different-ai (Benjamin Shafii), YC-backed.

Status
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Alive and shipping hard: 23,507 stars, 2,357 forks, 507 open issues and PRs as of 2026-09-13, created 2026-01-14, pushed today. v0.18.42 on 2026-09-02 (signed Windows installers) through v0.18.46 on 2026-09-10, multiple releases per week. It outlived its launch-week skepticism, but the founder still carries 2,911 of the top contributors’ roughly 4,000 commits.

Strengths
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  • Genuine open core with BYO providers and no hosted lock-in for the desktop app.
  • The MCP gateway is the real differentiator: capabilities invest once and work from every agent your team runs.
  • Extreme velocity with evals, CI hardening, and signed installers.
  • A real enterprise path (Den) without abandoning the MIT core.

Cautions
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  • Not uniformly open source: the Den control plane is subscription-gated for production beyond five users, and the repo launched with all rights reserved before MIT landed the same day.
  • HN-raised security questions were never fully resolved in public: no VM or sandbox boundary between agent and filesystem, and unversioned file edits, treat it like running Claude Code with broad permissions.
  • Single-dominant-maintainer risk.
  • v0.x software that launched as very alpha, with the macOS notarization status unverified.

Pricing
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Free: $0, the MIT desktop app with BYO keys and no seat cap on the app itself. Team: $10 per seat per month with the first 5 seats free (extension marketplace, distributed LLM keys), as of 2026-09-13. Enterprise: custom pricing (SSO/SAML, SCIM, BYO inference with self-hosted or private models, desktop policies and version controls, managed deployment, custom skill development, rollout support), as of 2026-09-13. The Den control plane inside the repo stays free for organizations up to five users, free to evaluate for 30 days at any size, and each ee/ release converts to MIT two years after publication.

Compared to
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  • Claude Cowork: polished, closed, subscription-tied with managed security; choose OpenWork for parity workflows without vendor or model lock-in.
  • Superset: the developer-IDE side of the same open wave; choose Superset for coding workflows, OpenWork for files-and-skills knowledge work beyond code.
  • Eigent: the multi-agent workforce desktop; choose OpenWork for the OpenCode ecosystem and MCP portability, Eigent for visual multi-agent teams.

Bottom line
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Recommended for mixed technical and non-technical teams that want Cowork-style agent work on their own machines and models, with skills that port across every agent they run. Not for teams that need a sandboxed security boundary the product does not provide, or uniform open-source licensing including the enterprise tier.

Changes
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  • 2026-08-30 - Created in the Assistant runtimes category, recording the OpenCode-based Cowork alternative with license-split and security-boundary cautions.
  • 2026-09-02 - Updated pricing: Free up to 5 users, Team $20 per seat, Enterprise $50.
  • 2026-09-05 - Updated pricing again: Solo free, Team Starter $10 per seat, Enterprise custom.
  • 2026-09-07 - Recorded Enterprise moving to $40 per user per month and Team Starter renamed to Team.
  • 2026-09-09 - Updated pricing again: Team $10 per seat up to 100 users, Enterprise $40 per user per month.
  • 2026-09-12 - Dropped the $40 per user and 100-user caps, moving Enterprise back to custom pricing.

See also
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References
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