Pizza Bot: pricing, features, alternatives

Pizza Bot is an inbox for long-running AI work: start or schedule a task, walk away, and come back to Unread (finished) or Action (needs a decision). The repo pizza-bot-app/pizza-bot is TypeScript, created 2026-06-26, Apache-2.0. On 2026-09-17 GitHub listed 267 stars and 18 forks. Latest release is v1.0.0 (2026-09-08, "Pizza Bot OSS 1.0.0"). It was developed at Amazon and open-sourced; 267 stars is a heat signal, not traffic. It showed up as a Show HN ("an inbox for AI agents that work in the background").

The desktop, web, and CLI talk to a local api-server over HTTP/SSE. Agents keep running when you navigate away; the api-server process must stay up. Compare Hermes Agent if you wanted a multi-channel personal agent, LangGraph if you only needed the graph runtime, or Claude Code if the work is a coding session rather than an inbox.

Key Features

Unread / Action queues: completed work and durable approval requests stay visible even if the thread is filed in a folder.
Checkpointed runs: disconnects do not kill the job. Cron and webhooks can start work without an open conversation.
Skills as subagents: Agent Skills become tool-scoped specialists; progress shows in an Activity panel.
Providers: Amazon Bedrock, Anthropic, Google Gemini, OpenAI, OpenRouter, and Ollama. PIZZA_MODEL=<provider>:<id>.
Surfaces: Electron desktop (macOS signed/notarized, Windows, Linux), browser, terminal CLI, standalone backend for Docker/Compose/Kubernetes.
Local folders are opt-in: Settings > Files; no default home-directory access. MCP servers and plugins are trusted code.

Limitation: Node.js 24+ to build from source. The api-server binds to 127.0.0.1 unless you set auth and an origin allowlist. Linux packages are unsigned; check SHA256SUMS. Plugins run with your user permissions.

Use Cases

Background research or drafting you do not want to babysit in a chat tab.
Human-in-the-loop actions (send, spend, write files) that should wait in Action.
Remote backends where the laptop is only a client.

Pricing

Piece	Price	Notes from first-party pages 2026-09-17
App / CLI	$0	Apache-2.0. Installers on GitHub Releases. About 267 stars.
Model usage	Your provider bill	Bedrock, Anthropic, Gemini, OpenAI, OpenRouter, or Ollama.

Getting Started

Download v1.0.0 from Releases, or npm install && npm run build && npm run dev on Node 24+.
Open Settings > Providers and set a model before a live run.
Grant only the folders you need under Settings > Files.
Start a task, leave, and check Unread / Action later.

First-party start: the README and Running guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does it need the cloud?

No. Default bind is localhost. State lives under ~/.pizza-bot-oss unless you change PIZZA_DATA_ROOT.

Is this LangGraph?

The production graph engine is isolated in packages/runtime-langgraph. Frontends consume protocol projections, not raw LangGraph objects.

Can it replace Claude Code?

No. It is an inbox and runtime for long jobs, not a repo-native coding IDE.

Alternatives

Hermes Agent: persistent multi-channel agent with a learning loop.
LangGraph: the orchestration library Pizza Bot sits on.
OpenAI Agents SDK: a library, not an inbox UI.

Tips

Keep the api-server running if you expect checkpoints to survive closing the window.
Treat MCP and plugins as root-equivalent. Install only what you trust.
Verify Linux checksums; macOS builds are signed, Linux is not.

Conclusion

Pizza Bot is a local inbox for agents that should keep working after you close the tab. Download the 1.0 desktop build, point it at a provider, and use Unread/Action instead of another always-on chat. Skip it if you only needed a coding CLI or a hosted team chat.