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Mainplane

x+github 0.55
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Intro

Mainplane is an open-source AI agent control plane publicly launched on October 26, 2026 (X + Show HN) by Alexander Yue (former engineer #2 at Browser Use). It is written in Go, licensed MIT, at mainplane-ai/mainplane, with site mainplane.ai.

The pitch: local agents die when your laptop sleeps; cloud agents cannot reach work that is not in a selected git repo. Mainplane runs the harness on an always-on server—API keys and sessions stay on the control plane—while tool calls are routed over a built-in WireGuard mesh to workers on your other machines that run shell and file tools.

Explain

Architecture highlights (from the author and repo)

  • Control plane + workers: the server makes LLM calls and stores sessions; bash/file tools execute on the worker’s own terminal; keys never leave the server
  • Session = file: each session is an append-only state file you can resume; observability is that file
  • Small by design: ~3k-token system prompt; tools are mainly shell and file (read/write/edit)
  • No default compaction path: when context fills, /continue starts a new session that greps the previous state file instead of writing a lossy summary
  • No permission-prompt philosophy: put the agent on a machine you trust and give it broad access there, rather than relying on prompts a model can work around
  • Subscriptions or API keys: Claude / ChatGPT subscription limits or any API key

Traction at launch

  • Launch post ~61 likes, 4.7k impressions, 48 bookmarks, 11 reposts (in-window)
  • Show HN: “Mainplane – Agent in Go that lives on your old PC, drives your laptop”
  • ~12★ on GitHub at scan time—clear name and story, still early stars → score 0.55

Usage

Self-host quickstart

On an always-on machine:

# Linux / macOS
curl -fsSL https://mainplane.ai/install | sh -s -- server quickstart

# Windows (PowerShell)
& ([scriptblock]::Create((irm https://mainplane.ai/install.ps1))) server quickstart

The wizard adds a model provider, workers (machines your agents control) and connectors. See docs/self-hosting.md in the repo.

git clone https://github.com/mainplane-ai/mainplane.git

Who it’s for

  • Developers with a spare desktop/mini PC who want an always-on “AI shed”
  • People whose work spans multiple machines and is not all in one git repo

Caveats

  • Early project: low star count—review the security model before attaching sensitive machines to the mesh
  • Domains: mainplane.ai / mainplane.net; bug reports per docs to bugs.mainplane.ai