Omnara – Open-source alternative to Claude Managed Agents

Hey all, Kartik from Omnara (https://omnara.com) here. We're building an open-source API for running durable agents. You create an agent with an API call, and Omnara runs the agent loop, gives the agent sandboxes to run commands in, and handles secrets, permissions, and RBAC. Each agent's state is stored in Postgres, so agents survive restarts and cost nothing while idle. You can message them and stream their events over the API.You may remember us from our early days, when we made a remote-control phone app for Claude Code and Codex. Since the harness ran on a laptop back then, we had to build a relay to reach it, it stopped when the laptop closed, and moving it to a cloud sandbox meant syncing code and agent state between machines. We didn't think remote-controlling a local agent was end-game for how people would run agents, so we built a new product where the agent runs in the cloud, any client can talk to it through an API, and it can still use your laptop as one of its machines.Anthropic and OpenAI are building hosted versions of this, like Claude Managed Agents and the OpenAI Agents API. Omnara is an open-source version you can run on your own servers and use your own models. It's basically a harness server like the opencode or codex servers, but durable, scalable, with the usual harness features like file and shell tools, subagents, compaction, permission prompts, MCP, skills, memory, yada yada yada.Here's some interesting architectural decisions we made while building this out:Most harnesses, like Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Pi, Goose, etc, run the agent loop in one long-lived process that keeps its log in a JSONL or SQLite file. In Omnara, the log is an append-only event log in Postgres, with inputs, model outputs and tool calls stored as typed rows in their own tables. The loop runs on stateless workers in the control plane. A worker runs one iteration of the loop, either a model call or the tool calls it produced, then

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78

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Verdict

VALIDATE

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Omnara is an open-source, durable agent API that runs scalable AI agents with state persistence and sandboxed execution.

The pain

Current managed agent solutions are proprietary, costly, and lack flexibility for users wanting control over models and infrastructure.

The gap

There is no widely adopted open-source platform that offers durable, scalable agent management with fine-grained permissions and state persistence.

Build angle

Leverage deep technical expertise to build a robust, scalable backend with Postgres event logs and stateless workers, focusing on developer experience and extensibility.

Strengths

  • Clear technical differentiation with durable state and scalable architecture
  • Open-source approach appeals to developers and enterprises wanting control
  • Supports multiple models and flexible deployment options
  • Strong foundation from prior experience with Claude Code and Codex

Risks

  • Monetization and willingness to pay are unclear given open-source nature
  • Competition from large AI providers offering managed services
  • Requires ongoing maintenance and community building to sustain growth
  • Potential complexity for users unfamiliar with infrastructure management

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