Contabo adds Paperclip, Dokploy and Hermes Agent to its 1-click catalogue
An orchestrator for autonomous AI teams, a self-hosted Heroku alternative and an AI agent that remembers across sessions now install on Contabo VPS and VDS without touching a package manager.
Contabo has added three open-source tools to the 1-click app catalogue on its VPS and VDS lines. All three are things people were already installing by hand on cheap servers; the change is that the hand part is gone.
The three
Paperclip — an orchestration platform for autonomous AI teams. Instead of running one chatbot, you describe an organisational structure and Paperclip coordinates the work across it through a shared task system.
Dokploy — a self-hosted deployment platform in the shape of Heroku. It builds applications straight from GitHub, GitLab or another repository, manages databases including MySQL and PostgreSQL, and handles SSL and routing through Docker and Traefik.
Hermes Agent — a self-improving AI agent from Nous Research that keeps memory between sessions, takes scheduled tasks described in plain language, and talks to you over Telegram, Discord, Slack or email.
How they go on
Two routes: pick the app in the configurator while ordering a VPS or VDS, or apply it to a server you already have through Reinstall in the Customer Control Panel. Installation typically finishes inside 30 minutes. Dokploy then hands you a web dashboard; Paperclip and Hermes Agent expect you to finish the configuration over SSH.
Contabo also published documented setup guides for Coolify and ZeroClaw — not full 1-click images, but written instructions for two more self-hosting targets.
The unglamorous reason this matters
Budget hosting is priced the way it is because you do your own operations. That is the whole bargain: no managed services, no hand-holding, and a bill a fraction of the managed alternative. A working image is the cheapest possible dent in that trade-off — it removes the first evening of yak-shaving without adding anything to the monthly price.
It is also a reasonable signal of where demand is going. Two of the three additions are AI agent platforms, and both of them are the self-hosted kind — run on your own box, keep your own data, pay for the server rather than per token.