Code PuppyvsSwival
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Code Puppy
mpfaffenberger · Terminal agent
#63OSSMCP
Panel
6.62 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 6.0
- Cost
- 8.8
- Longevity
- 5.5
“It runs in the terminal instead of an IDE, which is one way to end the argument about which IDE.”
Swival
Swival · Terminal agent
#134OSS
Panel
6.61 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.8
- Usefulness
- 6.2
- Cost
- 8.8
- Longevity
- 5.7
“The install command pins Python 3.14, which is a level of confidence the rest of us can only admire.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Code Puppy | Swival |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Terminal agent | Terminal agent |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | 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 | No | No |
| Headless / CI mode | No | YesSwival takes the task as a command-line argument and runs the loop to completion, which suits scripted use. |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI, Mistral, Qwen, OpenRouter, Ollama | LM Studio, llama.cpp, Hugging Face Inference API, OpenRouter, Google Gemini, Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform, ChatGPT Plus/Pro, AWS Bedrock, Apple Foundation Models, any OpenAI-compatible server |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | Yes | YesLM Studio and llama.cpp need no auth and no flags, and the loaded model is auto-discovered. |
| 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 | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 837 | 341 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Code Puppy | Swival | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 6.5 | 7.0 | Swival — Pick it if you work offline or on a laptop with a small model loaded; pick Aider if you have an API key and no constraint to respect. |
| El Crítico | 6.0 | 6.3 | Swival — An autonomous loop that runs until it produces an answer, driven by a weak model, with no iteration cap and no cost guard documented anywhere. |
| El Profesor | 7.0 | 6.5 | Code Puppy — Tool calls go through Pydantic AI, so arguments are validated by a typed library rather than recovered from prose, which removes a whole error class. |
| La Inversora | 6.5 | 6.0 | Code Puppy — 806 stars, one maintainer and a package index listing: real reach, zero capture, and no mechanism by which the second ever becomes revenue. |
| La Jefa | 6.0 | 6.3 | Swival — It takes the task as a command-line argument and runs to completion, which is the one property I need before anything lives on a build agent. |
| El Hacker | 7.5 | 7.8 | Swival — LM Studio and llama.cpp need no auth and no flags and the loaded model is auto-discovered, and it will shell out to an external command like codex exec. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.