AgentOSvsharness
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
AgentOS
Smart Computer · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
5.52 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 4.2
- Cost
- 7.2
- Longevity
- 4.7
“Propose, shadow, approve, apply, execute, receipt, audit: seven gates for the agent, and none for the human who typed the prompt.”
harness
wedow · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
5.61 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.0
- Usefulness
- 5.5
- Cost
- 7.3
- Longevity
- 4.7
“It can sign in with your ChatGPT or Claude subscription, which is a large decision for a hundred lines of shell script to be making.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | AgentOS | harness |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux | macos, linux |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | No |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | No | No |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | No |
| Headless / CI mode | No | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | multiple providers | Anthropic, OpenAI, Groq, ChatGPT subscription, Claude subscription |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | No | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | byok |
| Starts at | $0/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 216 | 169 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | AgentOS | harness | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 5.5 | 6.0 | harness — Pick this if you want to read the whole agent loop in one sitting and change any part of it; pick a maintained terminal agent if you want the parts already written. |
| El Crítico | 5.3 | 4.5 | AgentOS — Workflows request declared effects and adapters answer, so anything nobody wrote an adapter for is not merely hard, it is unreachable. |
| El Profesor | 6.3 | 6.3 | no preference |
| La Inversora | 5.0 | 5.5 | harness — A hundred and sixty-seven stars against more than a thousand forum mentions in a year: this is the most-discussed and least-installed row I have read today. |
| La Jefa | 5.0 | 4.3 | AgentOS — Zero per seat across sixty desks, a signed receipt for every action, and no console, no SSO and nothing that runs unattended. |
| El Hacker | 6.0 | 7.3 | harness — MIT, Homebrew or the AUR, and the entire dependency list is bash, jq and curl, with plugins in whatever language I feel like writing them in. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.