# Easel review

> Easel is an open-source AI agent workbench for social media creators that discovers trends, plans, creates, publishes, and analyzes content across Chinese platforms.

Devtoolwatch Board, the week of Oct 25–31, 2026. Canonical page: https://index.devtoolwatch.com/tools/zju-real-easel/

## TL;DR

Easel is an open-source content workbench that connects an agent, account profiles, content skills, and media tools into one social media workflow. It is for creators publishing to Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Zhihu, Bilibili, and other platforms. Easel keeps a persistent profile for each account and feeds performance data back into that profile.

## Easel at a glance

- **Category:** [Coding agents](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/categories/coding-agents/)
- **Maintained by:** REAL Lab (organization, [@ZJU-REAL](https://github.com/ZJU-REAL) on GitHub)
- **License:** Apache 2.0
- **Language:** Python, HTML, TypeScript
- **Repository:** [github.com/ZJU-REAL/Easel](https://github.com/ZJU-REAL/Easel)
- **Website:** [zju-real.github.io/Easel](https://zju-real.github.io/Easel/)
- **Latest release:** [v0.3.0](https://github.com/ZJU-REAL/Easel/releases/tag/v0.3.0) on GitHub, Oct 12, 2026
- **First published:** Aug 28, 2026

## What Easel does

- Easel aggregates trending lists, industry news, competitor activity, and user discussions to find topics that fit an account.
- Easel turns opportunities into topics, titles, scripts, and content matrices, and writes them into a content calendar.
- Easel generates copy, cards, posters, infographics, audio, video, short dramas, and paper explainers, saving outputs to an outputs/ folder.
- Easel adapts and publishes to Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, Zhihu, Bilibili, WeChat Channels, and WeChat Official Accounts.
- Easel reads plays, engagement, and comments, then writes effective patterns back into the account profile.
- Easel runs pre-publish checks, including quality gates and sensitive-content and copyright risk checks.
- Easel offers both automatic publishing and a manual review path that ends with the user submitting on the official page.

### How it works

Easel runs locally as a Python CLI with a FastAPI and React web workbench at localhost:7860. Easel uses OpenClaw by default with its own easel profile. Since v0.3.0, Codex, OpenCode, generic ACP, or a chat-only mode can serve as the execution engine instead. Easel connects to an LLM API and uses Playwright Chromium for browser login and publishing.

## How to install Easel

**Skip OpenClaw on Linux or macOS**

```
bash setup.sh --skip-openclaw
```

### Requirements

- Linux, macOS, or Windows 10/11 with Python 3.10+, the venv module, and git.
- Node.js 24.16+ (24.x), 26.1+ (26.x), or 27+. Versions 25.x and 26.0 are incompatible.
- An LLM API key: Anthropic, OpenAI, or an OpenAI- or Anthropic-compatible service.
- FFmpeg for audio and video skills, plus Playwright Chromium and valid platform accounts for browser publishing.

### First steps

1. Activate the virtual environment with source .venv/bin/activate so the easel command is available.
2. Run easel doctor to check the environment, then easel ping to test the gateway and Agent.
3. Run easel web and open http://localhost:7860. Enter your model API key under Settings → Model configuration.
4. Create an account profile on the web Profiles page, or copy profiles/_template into a new folder.

## Who Easel is for

- Creators running accounts on Chinese platforms like Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Zhihu, and Bilibili.
- Developers who want one agent to cover discovery, planning, creation, publishing, and analytics for social content.
- Teams repurposing one topic into multiple platform formats, such as cards, short videos, and long articles.
- Users who want to add their own trend sources through Python scripts, HTTP services, or RSS/Atom feeds.

### Limitations

- Automated publishing to Xiaohongshu risks verification, rate limiting, or account restrictions. The README recommends previewing and publishing manually there.
- Full Windows compatibility for all skills and browser publishing is still in progress.
- The web workbench has no authentication. The README warns against exposing it to the public internet.
- Video, music, and cloud voice skills require separate provider configuration and services.

## Usage data (the week of Oct 25–31, 2026)

- Board rank: #52 overall, #29 in Coding agents, momentum score 75
- New GitHub stars per week (last 12 weeks): Aug 9: n/a; Aug 16: n/a; Aug 23: 52; Aug 30: 259; Sep 6: 581; Sep 13: 297; Sep 20: 395; Sep 27: 1.4k; Oct 4: 420; Oct 11: 413; Oct 18: 255; Oct 25: 196

## Easel alternatives

| Rank | Tool | Stars | Downloads/wk |
|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | [Cindy](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/tools/makecindy-cindy/) | 8.8k | – |
| #2 | [OpenMausBot](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/tools/milind-soni-openmausbot/) | 9.6k | – |
| #3 | [Orca](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/tools/stablyai-orca/) | 111.7k | – |
| #4 | [OpenBot](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/tools/copilotkit-openbot/) | 9.1k | – |
| #5 | [Agent Reach](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/tools/panniantong-agent-reach/) | 107.2k | – |
| #6 | [Skill Recorder](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/tools/microsoft-skill-recorder/) | 5.6k | – |

## Easel FAQ

### Is Easel free and open source?

Yes. Easel's source code is on GitHub (ZJU-REAL/Easel) under the Apache 2.0 license, so you can use it for free.

### How do I install Easel?

Run `bash setup.sh --skip-openclaw`. The install section above has the other options from the project's README.

### Is Easel still maintained?

Yes. The ZJU-REAL/Easel repository was last updated on Nov 1, 2026, and the latest release, v0.3.0 on GitHub, came out on Oct 12, 2026.

### How popular is Easel?

Easel has 4.2k GitHub stars as of Nov 1, 2026. It gained 196 new stars in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, against a 12-week average of 425 a week. That made it #29 among AI coding agents on the Devtoolwatch Board.

### What are the best alternatives to Easel?

Other AI coding agents on the Devtoolwatch Board in the week of Oct 25–31, 2026, by momentum: Cindy (#1), OpenMausBot (#2), Orca (#3), OpenBot (#4), Agent Reach (#5). The alternatives table above has their numbers.

### How do I use Easel?

Easel is used mainly through its web workbench. Run easel web and open http://localhost:7860. You can also run easel chat for a terminal conversation, or run a single skill with easel skill <name> -i "...". The README recommends the web frontend because it offers more complete features than the CLI.

### Which platforms can Easel publish to?

Easel supports login, adaptation, and publishing for seven platforms: Xiaohongshu, Douyin, Kuaishou, Zhihu, Bilibili, WeChat Channels, and WeChat Official Accounts. Easel can also pull account data back from them.

### Which AI models does Easel work with?

Easel needs one LLM configured in .env or in the web settings. Supported options include Anthropic, OpenAI, and OpenAI-compatible or Anthropic-compatible services. If your chat API has no embedding model, Easel falls back to keyword memory retrieval unless you configure a separate embedding API.

### Does Easel require OpenClaw?

Easel uses OpenClaw by default, but it is not mandatory. Since v0.3.0, you can skip OpenClaw during install and choose Codex, OpenCode, generic ACP, or a chat-only mode as the execution engine instead.

## Sources

1. [ZJU-REAL/Easel on GitHub](https://github.com/ZJU-REAL/Easel)
2. [Easel README](https://github.com/ZJU-REAL/Easel/blob/main/README.md)
3. [Easel website](https://zju-real.github.io/Easel/)
4. [Release v0.3.0 (Oct 12, 2026)](https://github.com/ZJU-REAL/Easel/releases/tag/v0.3.0)
5. [Release v0.2.1 (Sep 24, 2026)](https://github.com/ZJU-REAL/Easel/releases/tag/v0.2.1)
6. [Release v0.2.0 (Sep 17, 2026)](https://github.com/ZJU-REAL/Easel/releases/tag/v0.2.0)
7. [Devtoolwatch Board, the week of Oct 25–31, 2026](https://index.devtoolwatch.com/)