hiclaw

This is an operating system for that. It uses Matrix chat rooms (the same protocol behind Element) as the coordination layer, so every agent action is visible as a message in a room you can read.

What's free: Everything. Apache 2.0 license, self-hosted, no paid tier.

The transparency angle is the real differentiator. Most multi-agent frameworks are black boxes where agents talk to each other and you get the result. HiClaw makes every decision, handoff, and tool call visible in Matrix rooms. For regulated industries or anyone who needs to audit what their AI agents did, that's a big deal.

The catch: it's from Alibaba, which means great engineering but documentation tends to be initially Chinese-focused with English as a second priority. It's growing fast but still early. The Matrix dependency adds infrastructure complexity. You need a Matrix homeserver running, which is its own ops burden.