ArchonvsDeepCode
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Archon
Cole Medin · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
7.11 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.8
- Usefulness
- 7.0
- Cost
- 8.7
- Longevity
- 6.0
“You can dispatch a production workflow from Telegram, which is either operational maturity or a cry for help.”
DeepCode
HKUDS · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
6.83 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.0
- Usefulness
- 5.8
- Cost
- 9.3
- Longevity
- 5.0
“Open source and free, this agent harness runs locally as a CLI, desktop app, or headless for CI.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Archon | DeepCode |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | Yes |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | Yes |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | any | |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | No | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | free | free |
| Starts at | n/a | n/a |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 23,599 | 16,665 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Archon | DeepCode | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.3 | 6.8 | Archon — Pick Archon if you want work started from a GitHub comment and finished as a pull request; pick Conductor or Claude Squad if writing a workflow file before the first run sounds like the wrong order. |
| El Crítico | 6.8 | 7.0 | DeepCode — DeepCode claims to be an agentic coding platform but lacks a browser, limiting its ability to research solutions outside the local environment. |
| El Profesor | 7.3 | 6.3 | Archon — The workflow is an explicit phase graph, plan, implement in a loop until tests pass, validate, review, approve, pull request, with the test suite as the loop exit condition. |
| La Inversora | 6.8 | 6.8 | no preference |
| La Jefa | 6.5 | 5.5 | Archon — Zero licence cost and it fits the pipelines we run, but it installs only on macOS and Linux, and our Windows engineers are not a rounding error. |
| El Hacker | 8.3 | 8.5 | DeepCode — DeepCode is a proper, MIT-licensed agent harness I can host myself, with MCP support and a headless mode for CI. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.