OpenHelm: A Local Background Scheduler for Claude Code with Self-Correcting Retry Logic
OpenHelm is a background scheduler specifically designed for Claude Code that addresses the problem of tasks stalling or failing repeatedly without user intervention. It runs jobs on a schedule with automatic retry logic that analyzes failures and adjusts prompts before retrying.
How It Works
Users set goals like "keep tests green," "weekly codebase audit," or "draft outreach for new leads." OpenHelm builds a plan of one-off and recurring jobs based on these goals. When a job fails, a lightweight assessor run reads the failure context and adjusts the prompt before retrying. Jobs continue running on schedule without requiring terminal monitoring.
Local-First Architecture
All application state remains on your machine: SQLite database at ~/.openhelm/openhelm.db, credentials stored in macOS Keychain (no SaaS dashboard). LLM calls go through your existing Claude Code subscription rather than requiring a separate API key. While it uses cloud LLMs (Claude), the infrastructure is fully local, keeping job history and project context on-device rather than in cloud databases.
Technical Stack
- Tauri 2 (Rust shell)
- React frontend
- Node.js agent sidecar
- SQLite via Drizzle ORM
The system has three fault-isolated subsystems:
- Scheduler (1-minute tick)
- Executor (streams logs to database as they arrive)
- Watchdog (30-minute timeout, auto-SIGTERM on hung processes)
Availability
The project is fair-source on GitHub and free for teams under 4 users.
📖 Read the full source: r/LocalLLaMA
👀 See Also
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