Paper Compute

Paper Compute builds tapes, an open-source tool that records how a coding agent arrived at a fix. It sits between the agent and its model provider and saves their exchanges in a local Postgres database. A developer reviewing a patch can trace which command failed, see the error the agent received and follow what it tried next.

The company built paper console on the same recording engine so teammates can search sessions across projects. Developers can use the paperctl command-line tool to capture a Claude Code session, and platform teams can choose which models are available through a shared endpoint. When a debugging session succeeds, Paper Compute’s platform can turn its commands, errors and fixes into a skill other agents can follow. To measure whether the skill helps, the platform runs the same recorded prompt with and without the skill and grades both attempts against the same checks.

Brian Douglas and John McBride co-founded Paper Compute. Brian previously founded Open Sauced, where he worked on open-source adoption. John created both tapes and stereOS, Paper Compute’s NixOS-based operating system for running agents. In stereOS, gVisor isolates each agent in its own sandbox, while a read-only Nix package store gives every agent the same set of Linux tools.