OWL camel-ai/owl

Multi-agent assistant built on CAMEL-AI that browses, searches, runs code and reads Office/PDF files, with a local Gradio web UI and your own model keys.

Creator kit + Compare GitHub ↗ Install guide (official) ↗

OWL at a glance

Checked 16 Oct 2026

OWL (20.2k stars, Apache-2.0) from CAMEL-AI runs teams of agents on a task: Playwright browser automation, web search, code execution, terminal and file writing, and parsing of Word, Excel, PDF and PowerPoint files. It starts from Python scripts or a local Gradio web UI, or Docker. It needs a model API key (OpenAI by default, many providers via CAMEL) and multimodal models for browser work; an Ollama example exists. Mostly a research project: the last code change was March 2026 and later commits only update a QR code. No slides or site builder, no scheduler.

Cite this pageRepoQuarry. “OWL.” Checked 16 Oct 2026. https://repoquarry.dev/projects/owl

How much of Manus does it replace?

2 of 6 jobs. Browsing, search, code and document tasks; no hosted app, slides, websites, schedules or app connectors.

Autonomous web browsing Partial replacement

Deep research reports Not covered

File and code tasks in a sandbox Partial replacement

Slides generated from a prompt Not covered

Scheduled agent tasks Not covered

Connectors to your apps Not covered

For deep research reports, slides generated from a prompt, scheduled agent tasks, connectors to your apps, see other Manus alternatives. You may also need to build an interface, an API server and hosting yourself.

Facts, with sources

Every answer links to where we found it. We read the documentation; we did not install it.

Report a correction

QuestionAnswerSourceChecked

Runs on my machine? Yes, Python scripts or a local Gradio web UI; Docker image also available The web interface is built using Gradio and runs locally on your machine. github.com · owl#starting-the-web-ui ↗ today

Code licence Apache-2.0 The source code is licensed under Apache 2.0. github.com · owl#-license ↗ today

Model weights licence No separate model weights; you bring your own model API key or a local Ollama model OWL requires various API keys to interact with different services. github.com · owl#readme ↗ today

Commercial use Yes, Apache-2.0 code; model terms depend on the provider you choose The source code is licensed under Apache 2.0. github.com · owl#-license ↗ today

Paid services needed? An LLM API key is needed for the main examples; an Ollama example runs a local model; other tool keys are optional you only need to configure the LLM API key github.com · owl#readme ↗ today

Hardware Not documented; cloud model use needs only Python; browser tasks need a multimodal model Know the answer? —

Operating systems Windows, macOS and Linux; Python 3.10 to 3.12 OWL supports Python 3.10, 3.11, and 3.12. github.com · owl#readme ↗ today

Setup effort Medium; pip/uv/conda install plus .env API keys, or a prebuilt Docker image This option downloads a ready-to-use image from Docker Hub github.com · owl#option-4-using-docker ↗ today