🪴 Orchid

Secure • Sandboxed • Multi-Agent LLM Orchestration

Run reliable teams of LLM agents locally with strong container isolation, persistent goals, structured object editing, and a beautiful real-time dashboard.

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✨ Features

• Hard Sandboxing — Every agent runs in its own Podman container (overlayfs preferred + smart Elixir union-fs fallback)
• Goal-Driven Workflows — Persistent goals, planning, execution, self-review, and human approval loops
• Structured Object Editing — Agents create/edit rich objects (codebases, documents, data structures, plans) instead of just text
• Human-in-the-Loop Review Queue — Built-in approval system for critical or high-stakes actions
• Real-time LiveView Dashboard — Monitor, intervene, and collaborate with all agents live
• Developer-First CLI — ./orchid start, stop, logs, status, shell <agent>
• Local & Private — Everything runs on your machine. Full control, zero data leaves your laptop

🚀 Quick Start (under 60 seconds)

git clone https://github.com/sdancer/orchid.git && cd orchid

mix deps.get

# Configure your LLM keys
cp .env.example .env # ← edit this file

./orchid start

Open http://localhost:4000 — you're ready to create your first agent!

Requirements

• Elixir 1.17+ & Erlang/OTP 26+
• Podman (v4+, rootless mode strongly recommended)
• An LLM provider (Ollama, OpenAI, Anthropic, Groq, etc.)

Pro tip: Rootless Podman + overlayfs gives the best security and performance.

🏗 Architecture

graph TD
 A[LiveView UI] --> B[Phoenix Router + Channels]
 B --> C[Agent Controller]
 C --> D[DynamicSupervisor + Registry]
 D --> E[Agent GenServer]
 E --> F[Sandbox GenServer]
 F --> G["Podman Container<br/>(overlayfs isolation)"]
 E --> H[CubDB Persistence]
 E --> I[LLM Provider Adapter]

 style G fill:#e1f5fe,stroke:#0284c8

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Built on battle-tested OTP patterns:

• DynamicSupervisor + Registry for agent lifecycle
• CubDB for lightweight embedded storage
• Bandit + Phoenix LiveView for the web layer

🔒 Security Model

See SANDBOX.md for full details.

Every agent is isolated in its own container with:

• Filesystem overlay isolation
• Minimal privileges & resource limits (configurable)
• Optional network restrictions
• Graceful fallback to union-fs when full Podman isn't available

📍 Status & Roadmap

Early Alpha (57 commits, heavily assisted by Claude). Expect rapid evolution.

Coming soon:

• Docker Compose support
• Built-in agent templates (Coder, Researcher, Critic, etc.)
• Usage & cost tracking
• Simple auth for the web UI
• Hex package + full documentation

🤝 Contributing

We love contributions! See CONTRIBUTING.md (coming soon) and CLAUDE.md for our development philosophy.

📄 License

MIT License — free to use, modify, and build upon for both personal and commercial projects.

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Made with ❤️ and OTP for the Elixir and AI communities.