Verified project record

alphaXiv/OpenResearch

OpenResearch is a local-first harness and workspace that lets existing coding agents act as research agents, supporting literature review, hypothesis development, experiments, and research artifact production with local experiment memory. It runs locally, keeps projects and artifacts on your machine, and does not collect code or agent traces.

Project overview

It addresses a specific gap—coding agents lacking a dedicated local research harness and persistent memory of past experiment results—while keeping data ownership local, with optional managed compute rather than a required cloud dependency.

Project type: AI Agent · Workflow
Use cases: Search & Research · Coding & Development · Automation
Deployment: Refer to project documentation
License: MIT

Best for

Researchers and developers who want their existing coding agents to perform research tasks—literature review, hypothesis development, experiments, and artifact production—with local memory of past results and data kept on their machine.

Key capabilities

Launch research agents that can review literature, develop hypotheses, run experiments, and produce research artifacts.
Records every experiment in a local SQL database and keeps logs, code, and artifacts on the user's machine so agents can learn from past results.

Limitations and risks

The Windows app is in Beta and requires Git for Windows to be installed.
The data boundary is external-optional: the tool runs locally without collecting code or agent traces, but managed OpenResearch compute via an openresearch.sh account is offered as an optional external service, and telemetry is optional.

Getting started

Download the OpenResearch desktop app for your platform from the latest release, install and open it, then launch research agents. Setup is rated easy and no coding is required. On Windows, the app is in Beta and requires Git for Windows.

Evidence and sources

README: The local-first harness & workspace for research agents.
README: Windows beta requires <a href="docs/windows.md">Git for Windows</a>
README: Launch research agents that can review literature, develop hypotheses, run experiments, and produce research artifacts.
README: Create an account at [openresearch.sh](https://openresearch.sh) to receive email updates and use managed OpenResearch compute.
README: OpenResearch integrates with <img src=".github/readme-assets/alphaxiv.svg" alt="" width="18" height="18" align="absmiddle" /> alphaXiv, <img src=".github/readme-assets/biorxiv.svg…

Source updated at: 2026-10-09T18:18:46Z

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