Clay StudiovsKelos
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Clay Studio
chadbyte · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
6.81 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.2
- Usefulness
- 6.8
- Cost
- 8.0
- Longevity
- 6.0
“It ships something called a Ralph Loop, which is the most honest name anybody has given an infinite while statement.”
Kelos
Kelos · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
6.82 spec wins
- Reliability
- 7.0
- Usefulness
- 7.0
- Cost
- 7.0
- Longevity
- 6.2
“Agents can be spawned from a cron entry, so your codebase now changes on a schedule whether or not anybody asked.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Clay Studio | Kelos |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | cloud, sandbox |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows, web | macos, linux, web |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | YesClay browses, edits and diffs files in the workspace, but code changes are produced by the coding-agent runtime it dispatches to. | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | YesEvery agent runs in an isolated Kubernetes Pod or Job rather than on a developer laptop. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, Kimi Code, GitHub Copilot CLI, Qwen Code, Junie CLI, Antigravity CLI, OpenCode, Kiro CLI | via managed agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, OpenCode, Cursor, custom agent images) |
| 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 | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| GitHub stars | 399 | 335 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Clay Studio | Kelos | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.0 | 6.8 | Clay Studio — Pick it if agent work in your team keeps meaning one person and nine spectators; pick a single-user harness if you are the only one who touches the repository. |
| El Crítico | 6.5 | 6.0 | Clay Studio — Permission prompts can be answered by whichever teammate is looking, which means the authority to let an agent act belongs to nobody in particular. |
| El Profesor | 7.0 | 7.3 | Kelos — Task status records the branches, commits, pull requests and token usage a run produced, which turns the outcome of an agent into a queryable field rather than a screenshot. |
| La Inversora | 6.3 | 6.3 | no preference |
| La Jefa | 6.0 | 6.8 | Kelos — Identity, roles and audit come from the cluster I already operate, which is the first time this quarter a tool answered the security questionnaire by not existing separately. |
| El Hacker | 7.8 | 7.8 | no preference |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.