Help with importing an existing company
Julio Aira IV · 2026-05-03
Hi everyone, I started experimenting with Paperclip on my local machine. I love it so far helping with work on some of my freelance projects. One issue I have is needing to power my local machine and constantly needing to be connected to the internet. Has anyone had any success with importing an existing company onto a virtual machine? Thank you in advance for the help!
Answers
Aron Prins · 2026-05-03
Yes — moving off a laptop onto a VM (or a Mac mini, or a small VPS) is exactly what the export/import flow is built for, and a lot of people end up doing it for the same reason you described.
Just published a full walkthrough that should cover it end to end: Moving Your Paperclip Company to a Server (/guides/operations/moving-to-a-server). It walks through:
Picking the right deployment shape (Tailscale-private is usually what you want — no public URL, but reachable from your own devices) Exporting from the laptop and standing up the new instance (Docker quickstart or native paperclipai install) The two things the package doesn't carry, so you don't get stuck: API keys/secrets, and working-directory paths Re-enabling heartbeats one at a time so nothing burns budget while still misconfigured A supervised first cycle to catch anything that didn't survive the trip
The TL;DR for your setup: export from the laptop, run Paperclip on the VM in authenticated + private mode behind Tailscale (or however you reach the VM), import the package, re-create your secrets on the new instance, fix up cwd paths to match the VM filesystem, and enable heartbeats one agent at a time starting with the CEO.
Hope this helps — and if anything in the guide is unclear or missing for your setup, let me know and I'll improve it.