CodeAltavsMothX
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
CodeAlta
Alexandre Mutel · Terminal agent
#114OSSMCP
Panel
6.30 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.8
- Usefulness
- 6.2
- Cost
- 7.5
- Longevity
- 5.7
“Attach files with an at sign and GitHub issues with a hash, so your prompt now has the same syntax as a social media post.”
MothX
startvibecoding · Terminal agent
#130OSSMCP
Panel
6.31 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.8
- Usefulness
- 6.3
- Cost
- 7.8
- Longevity
- 5.2
“It publishes FreeBSD binaries, a thoroughness the rest of this industry abandoned somewhere around the second funding round.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | CodeAlta | MothX |
|---|---|---|
| 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 | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | YesHost tools execute the agent's tool calls, and an in-session "alta" live tool automates local workflows. | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | No | No |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | NoIsolation uses bwrap process sandboxing rather than a container; a Docker image is offered only as a way to run MothX itself. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | YesDelegated work and plugin orchestration adapters run through the same session runtime; different sessions execute concurrently. | Yes--multi-agent runs asynchronous sub-agents, --delegate blocks on a delegated subtask, and an A2A master mode coordinates across systems. |
| Headless / CI mode | No | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Codex, GitHub Copilot, xAI Grok, OpenAI, Azure OpenAI, Alibaba, Anthropic, Gemini, Vertex | DeepSeek, OpenAI, Anthropic, Volcengine, LongCat, Mistral, GitHub Copilot, Cloudflare, Amazon Bedrock |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | No | Yes |
| 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 | BSD-2-Clause | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 227 | n/a |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | CodeAlta | MothX | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 6.0 | 6.5 | MothX — Pick this if you want a terminal agent that also lives inside the editor you already use; pick a purpose-built extension if the terminal was never where you wanted to be. |
| El Crítico | 5.5 | 5.8 | MothX — One of the three modes grants full system access by name, and the command safety underneath it is a blacklist, which is the weaker half of that design choice. |
| El Profesor | 7.0 | 6.3 | CodeAlta — A session actor per conversation serialises prompts, compacts long histories and journals every step, which places conversation state in the runtime rather than the provider. |
| La Inversora | 5.8 | 6.0 | MothX — Published under a Chinese hosting foundation's namespace with a mirror abroad, first released in May 2026, and already carrying a skills marketplace, which is where a business would start. |
| La Jefa | 6.0 | 5.3 | CodeAlta — Zero licence cost, and it installs as a global tool through the package manager my Windows fleet already runs, against Copilot and Codex subscriptions finance already pays. |
| El Hacker | 7.5 | 8.0 | MothX — MIT, twenty-plus vendor adapters with DeepSeek as the default, local weights supported and MCP servers attaching, all from a single Go binary with no external dependencies. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.