ClaudinevsSymphony
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Claudine
Xemantic · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
4.74 spec wins
- Reliability
- 3.8
- Usefulness
- 4.2
- Cost
- 6.7
- Longevity
- 4.2
“The Windows native build is still in progress, which is also a fair status report for an agent that keeps rewriting itself.”
Symphony
OpenAI · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
4.83 spec wins
- Reliability
- 4.7
- Usefulness
- 4.8
- Cost
- 5.5
- Longevity
- 4.0
“The release binary is symphony-v0.0.1, so the version number doubles as the maintenance plan.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Claudine | Symphony |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | No |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | YesClaudine has internet access through its tools; the README does not describe browser automation. | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | No | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Anthropic | Codex (OpenAI) |
| Bring your own model | Yes | No |
| Local models | No | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | free |
| Starts at | $0/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | No |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | GPL-3.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| GitHub stars | 179 | 27,502 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Claudine | Symphony | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 5.5 | 4.8 | Claudine — Pick this if you want to understand how a harness works from the inside; pick a maintained terminal agent if you want to finish a ticket this afternoon. |
| El Crítico | 4.3 | 3.5 | Claudine — It is documented as able to rewrite its own prompts, modify its algorithmic logic and add its own tools, which makes every reproduction report a different program. |
| El Profesor | 4.8 | 5.5 | Symphony — WORKFLOW.md is YAML front matter over a Markdown prompt; a workspace per issue, max_concurrent_agents defaulting to 10 and max_turns to 20, restarts on stall, PRs with proof of work. |
| La Inversora | 4.8 | 4.5 | Claudine — Xemantic sells workshops and research, so the code is the syllabus rather than the asset, and a hundred and seventy-seven stars is the marketing return on it. |
| La Jefa | 3.5 | 4.3 | Symphony — Elixir and OTP through mise, Codex and git on the host, tracker credentials for Linear, GitHub Issues, Jira, Asana or GitLab, and nobody on call; not yet. |
| El Hacker | 5.5 | 6.0 | Symphony — Apache-2.0 Elixir, one codex.command key to swap the agent, hooks.after_create to prepare a workspace, no MCP, no local models, and a README that tells me to fork it. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.