cmuxvsPaperclip
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
cmux
Manaflow · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
6.61 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.3
- Usefulness
- 6.5
- Cost
- 7.5
- Longevity
- 6.0
“A terminal for coordinating many agents on exactly one operating system, so the agent wars are settled by what laptop you were issued.”
Paperclip
Paperclip Labs, Inc. · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
6.71 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.2
- Usefulness
- 6.7
- Cost
- 7.0
- Longevity
- 7.0
“Gives every agent a title and a reporting line, so the first thing your AI workforce receives is middle management.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | cmux | Paperclip |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | local, cloud |
| Platforms | macos | macos, linux, web |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | No |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | No | No |
| Git operations | NoThe sidebar displays branch and pull request status but cmux performs no git operations itself. | No |
| Browser control | Yes | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | YesNative panes for Claude Code Teams and oh-my-opencode orchestration; cmux runs and watches the agents rather than running an agent loop of its own. | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | via managed agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode, Gemini CLI, Amp, Aider) | via agent adapters (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini, Cursor, OpenClaw, Hermes, Pi, HTTP and shell agents) |
| Bring your own model | No | No |
| Local models | No | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | free | free |
| Starts at | $0/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | No | No |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | GPL-3.0-or-later | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 27,557 | 95,916 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | cmux | Paperclip | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.3 | 7.0 | cmux — Pick it if you run several agents on a Mac and your terminal has become a graveyard of tabs; pick Warp if you want the terminal itself to be the agent. |
| El Crítico | 6.5 | 6.0 | cmux — A programmable browser lives inside the same application that hosts your agents and your remote sessions, and no sandbox is recorded anywhere on the row. |
| El Profesor | 6.8 | 6.5 | cmux — Attention routing is built on OSC 9, 99 and 777 escape sequences rather than a private hook, which is the design choice most likely to outlast the agents it hosts. |
| La Inversora | 6.0 | 6.3 | Paperclip — Paperclip Labs, Inc. with an MIT product, 80,000 stars and cloud deployments marked in progress on the roadmap: the hosted tier is the business, and it is not shipped. |
| La Jefa | 5.5 | 6.3 | Paperclip — Monthly budgets per agent with hard stops and spend tracked by company, project and provider is the first orchestrator here with a finance answer; SSO and support are still missing. |
| El Hacker | 7.5 | 8.3 | Paperclip — MIT, self-hosted in Docker, an adapter contract so loose that a shell script or a webhook counts as an employee, and an MCP gateway ticked on the roadmap. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.