Built for agents
Structured fields — summaries, Plans, Decisions — plus a markdown handbook. Not just notes in a sidebar.
Open source · AGPL-3.0
The AI-native CRM for startups
Open-source CRM your agents can operate. Every record, pipeline, and handbook page is available over MCP and REST. Your team and your agent read the same data.
Why Kelpie
Startups need a CRM that works for humans and agents. Kelpie is a company brain — structured relationship data plus institutional knowledge in one workspace.
Company brain
CRM records and institutional knowledge in one workspace your agent can query natively over MCP.
Startup-friendly
Self-host free under AGPL. No per-seat pricing. No bundled AI — bring Claude, Cursor, or any MCP client.
Everything a startup CRM needs
Standard CRMs stop at contacts and deals. Kelpie tracks every relationship a startup depends on — plus the agent-ready API and handbook your team shares.
Beyond contacts and deals
Opportunities, Hiring, Partnerships, Fundraising, and list management — first-class features typical CRMs never ship.
Opportunities
Grants, competitions, accelerators, tenders, press, and speaking — not a Salesforce-style alias for deals.
Hiring
Roles and Candidates with interview stages, referrers, and notes on the hire — not hiring fields bolted onto a contact.
Partnerships
Integrations, channel partners, advisors, and investors — ongoing two-way relationships with goals and touchpoints.
Fundraising
Raises with thesis fit, check size, and pass reasons — a dedicated pipeline from intro to term sheet, separate from the investor relationship.
List management
Hand-curated, typed record collections — a Lists tab on every record. Curation, not search: members stay until someone removes them.
Core platform
Sales CRM
People, Companies, Positions, and Deals — with agent-oriented fields on every record.
Handbook
Nested markdown pages for product, ICP, voice, and how you sell. A first-class API resource agents can search.
Agent-ready API
REST plus MCP with 110 tools. The UI and your agents use the same surface — no private endpoints.
Agent tasks
69 prompt recipes across 10 record types. Copy into your agent or dispatch the same payload to a registered agent.
Pipelines
Shared kanban for Deals, Opportunities, and Raises. Drag-and-drop stages with dated Plan items instead of next-step text.
Import, forms, search
CSV import with HubSpot and Salesforce presets, embeddable lead forms, and full-text search across nine collections.
Decisions
Plans
Webhooks
Sample data
Activities
Why not another CRM?
API-first CRMs proved the demand. Kelpie goes further — built as a source of truth for agents from day one.
| Typical CRM | Kelpie | |
|---|---|---|
| Agent access | Bolt-on integrations, limited API | MCP + REST from day one; same API as the UI |
| Company knowledge | Scattered docs, Notion, Slack | Handbook is a first-class API resource |
| AI | Bundled chatbot, vendor lock-in | Bring your own agent; no bundled LLM |
| Pricing | Per-seat, enterprise tiers | Free self-host; flat per-workspace cloud (coming) |
| Startup workflows | Sales only — everything else is a spreadsheet | Opportunities, Hiring, Partnerships, Fundraising, and Lists built in |
| List management | Dynamic segments and tags | Hand-curated, typed lists — visible on every record |
| Data model | Generic contacts and accounts | Raises, Roles, Decisions, Plans — designed for how startups work |
Kelpie is the CRM I wish I had in my business from day one. A system that supports the processes early-stage and growth startups need to thrive.
Get Kelpie
Two ways to run it. Same core, your choice.
Free · AGPL-3.0
Self-host (open source)
Run it yourself in minutes. Full control, zero vendor lock-in.
npm create kelpie@latest
Coming soon
Kelpie Cloud (hosted)
Managed hosting, optional hosted agent, integrations — same core, zero ops.
- Flat per-workspace pricing
- No per-seat tax
- Gmail sync, SSO, and integrations
Coming soon