ChatDev is an open-source multi-agent platform with 34,500+ stars on GitHub that lets LLM-powered agents collaborate to build software and much more.
ChatDev, from OpenBMB, became famous as a “virtual software company”: in version 1.0, agents playing CEO, CTO, programmer and tester roles held specialized discussions and carried a product from idea to code. Version 2.0 — also called DevAll — generalizes that idea into a zero-code multi-agent orchestration platform for “developing everything”. Through simple configuration, no coding required, you define agents, workflows and tasks, then let the system execute complex scenarios such as software development, data visualization, 3D generation and deep research. The legacy 1.0 branch remains available for the classic software-company workflow. The project is Apache-2.0 licensed and actively developed, with repository updates in October 2026.
Part of ChatDev’s influence is conceptual: it demonstrated, early and in public, that role specialization plus structured discussion between agents could outperform a single model working alone, and hundreds of later multi-agent frameworks borrowed the pattern. The 2.0 platform packages those lessons for non-specialists — a teacher, analyst or founder can assemble an agent team for a recurring research or content task without standing up infrastructure. Everything remains self-hosted and inspectable, so the agents’ prompts, handoffs and tools are yours to tune as the models underneath improve.
ChatDev is free and open source under the Apache License 2.0. You only pay for the LLM API usage of the models you connect.
Researchers, builders and curious teams exploring multi-agent systems — whether to prototype agent workflows without code or to study how role-playing agents solve complex tasks together.