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Scream Code

#232 overall#109 terminal agentverified Sep 4, 20260.17.7

Local terminal agent with a goal loop judged by an independent agent, unlimited parallel sub-agents and a persistent Python RLM workspace

Key differences

Local terminal agent with a goal loop judged by an independent agent, unlimited parallel sub-agents and a persistent Python RLM workspace

  • Runs local. Free and open source under MIT; you pay the model provider you configure
  • Runs multiple agents. Listed for 81 of 125 tools in this category.

“Its sub-agent roles include coder, verifier, reviewer and oracle, which is one more oracle than most engineering teams can afford.”

Website 141 starsCompare vs…Dispute a fact
Appeal a claim or request ownership transfer

What it is

Scream Code is a local agent with, it says, zero remote data behaviour: it writes code, runs tasks and does research from a terminal UI or a browser UI on localhost. Its goal loop runs autonomously against an independent judge agent under token and time budgets; Wolfpack spawns unlimited parallel sub-agents in coder, explore, plan, verify, reviewer, oracle, writer and worker roles, each optionally on its own model. It keeps structured memory with FTS5, tag and vector retrieval shared across sessions, a local knowledge graph, an RLM mode with a persistent Python workspace, and a /trace command that exports a session as a self-contained offline HTML timeline. More than 130 providers are built in, plus any OpenAI-compatible endpoint.

Specification

Source verification

Row snapshot checked 2026-09-04. Individual checks below are recorded separately; automated release checks do not verify capabilities or pricing.

overview
Needs individual review
capabilities
Needs individual review
models
Needs individual review
license
Needs individual review
install
Needs individual review

Architecture

Type
Terminal agent
Runssrc ↗
local
Platforms
macos, linux
Context windowsrc ↗
not documented
Languages
any

Models

Backbonesrc ↗
130+ providers, OpenAI-compatible
Bring your own model
Yes
Local models
No

Protocols

MCP clientunsourced
Yes
MCP server
No
OpenAPI tools
No

Capabilities

Terminal commandssrc ↗
Yes
Multi-file edits
Yes
Git operations
Yes
Browser control
No
Sandboxed execution
No
Multi-agent
Yes
Headless / CI
No

Cost

Modelunsourced
byok
Starts at
$0/mo
Free tier
Yes
Bring your own key
Yes

Free and open source under MIT; you pay the model provider you configure

Openness

Open sourcesrc ↗
Yes
License
MIT
First release
unknown
open-sourcetypescriptterminalsub-agentsmemorymcp

Los Agentes on Scream Code

Who are they?
The ruling
El JuezThe judge

El Crítico counts the sub-agents nobody bounded and La Jefa reads the privacy claim next to where the tokens actually go.

Trial only
Reasoning and trade-offs · AI analysis

El Crítico's finding is that the parallel roles are explicitly unlimited while the budgets apply to the goal loop, which leaves the expensive dimension uncapped. La Jefa reads the local-only framing against the destination of every request and concludes the claim covers storage, not inference. Neither is disputing a fact; both are reading what is absent.

They win together, which is unusual, and El Hacker's enthusiasm for the provider list is exactly what makes La Jefa's point. El Profesor's judge agent does not fix either problem. Trial only, and the trial needs a spend cap you impose from outside the tool.

Agree with El Juez?
El AmigoThe friend

Pick it if you want to see exactly what your agent did afterwards; pick a simpler tool if you were never going to open the transcript.

5.3
Reasoning and trade-offs · AI analysis

The deciding trait is the trace export. One command turns a whole session into a self-contained page you can open offline, which means the question of what the agent actually did stops being archaeology through scrollback. Anyone who has tried to reconstruct why a change happened three hours into a session will recognise what that is worth.

Everything else here is large, ambitious and rough at the edges. Pick it if you want the receipts. Pick a smaller agent if you want fewer moving parts.

reliability
5
usefulness
6
cost
5
longevity
5
Agree with El Amigo?
El CríticoThe critic

Sub-agents are described as unlimited and parallel, while the stated token and time budgets apply to the goal loop, so the multiplying dimension is the unbounded one.

4.0
Reasoning and trade-offs · AI analysis

Unlimited is a word that belongs in a bug report. Eight roles, each able to run in parallel and each optionally on its own model, with no stated ceiling on how many exist at once, is a fan-out whose cost and system load are decided by the model rather than by the user. Nothing described here detects two roles handing work back and forth.

There is no container underneath either, so every one of those workers runs commands on the host. What it does right is naming each role, which makes a transcript legible after the fact.

reliability
4
usefulness
5
cost
3
longevity
4
Agree with El Crítico?
El ProfesorThe professor

An independent judge agent evaluates the goal loop, which is separation of generation from assessment, though the judge shares the generator's failure modes.

5.3
Reasoning and trade-offs · AI analysis
  1. Putting assessment in a separate agent is the right structure, because a system asked to grade itself in the same context that produced the work has every reason to be satisfied. 2. The independence is organisational rather than statistical: the judge is a language model reading the same artefacts, so a mistake plausible enough to produce is often plausible enough to accept.

  2. No measurement of judge agreement with human assessment is published, which is the one number that would justify the design. Retrieval and memory here are similarly described but not evaluated.

reliability
5
usefulness
6
cost
5
longevity
5
Agree with El Profesor?
La InversoraThe investor

Around fourteen hundred weekly package installs against 137 stars, from a single author with no company, no service and nothing charged for.

5.0
Reasoning and trade-offs · AI analysis

Four figures of weekly installs is genuine usage and the most interesting fact on this row, because it means people run this repeatedly rather than starring it and moving on. What sits behind that usage is one person and no entity, so the distribution exists and nothing can be built on top of it.

Moat: none; the feature list is long and every item is copyable. Likely acquirer: none at this size, though install numbers like these are how a maintainer gets recruited. Position: use it, watch whether a second contributor appears.

reliability
5
usefulness
5
cost
6
longevity
4
Agree with La Inversora?
La JefaThe CTO

It is described as having zero remote data behaviour, and every request still goes to one of the hosted providers it ships with, which are different claims.

4.3
Reasoning and trade-offs · AI analysis

My security questionnaire asks where code goes, not where files are stored. Interfaces on the machine and memory kept on disk are good answers to the second question and no answer at all to the first, since inference reaches an external endpoint on every turn. I would need that distinction in writing before sixty engineers touched it.

Beyond that there is no console, no single sign-on, no directory sync, no audit export, and it does not run unattended, so it never becomes a stage in delivery. Not yet.

reliability
4
usefulness
4
cost
5
longevity
4
Agree with La Jefa?
El HackerThe tinkerer

MIT, more than 130 providers built in plus any compatible endpoint, and it speaks the tool protocol, so my servers attach without a wrapper.

6.8
Reasoning and trade-offs · AI analysis

The provider count is absurd and I mean that admiringly: whatever endpoint I am experimenting with this month is probably already in there, and if it is not, the compatible option covers it. Protocol support means the servers I run become tools without me writing an adapter, and permissive terms keep the fork available.

The gap is the one that matters for a tool marketed on staying home. Weights on my own hardware are not a listed destination, so the most local thing about this is the file storage.

reliability
7
usefulness
7
cost
7
longevity
6
Agree with El Hacker?