Codelvssmol developer
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Codel
Serhii Semenov · Autonomous SWE
#257OSS
Panel
4.05 spec wins
- Reliability
- 3.5
- Usefulness
- 4.2
- Cost
- 6.7
- Longevity
- 1.5
“It picks the Docker base image from your task description, which is either clever or how you end up compiling PHP.”
smol developer
smol.ai · Autonomous SWE
#262OSS
Panel
3.61 spec wins
- Reliability
- 3.5
- Usefulness
- 3.2
- Cost
- 6.5
- Longevity
- 1.3
“It called itself a junior developer in 2023 and, unlike the rest of us, never once asked for a promotion.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Codel | smol developer |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Autonomous SWE | Autonomous SWE |
| Runs | local, sandbox | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | No |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | No |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | No | No |
| Browser control | Yes | No |
| Sandboxed execution | Yes | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | No | No |
| Headless / CI mode | No | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | GPT, Llama | GPT, Claude |
| Bring your own model | Yes | No |
| Local models | Yes | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | byok |
| Starts at | n/a | n/a |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | AGPL-3.0 | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 2,475 | 12,186 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Codel | smol developer | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 3.8 | 3.5 | Codel — Do not adopt: this stopped receiving commits in 2024, and anyone who wants a self-hosted agent with a shell and a browser should be running OpenHands. |
| El Crítico | 3.8 | 3.0 | Codel — No commits since 2024, and for a project whose runtime is a container image and a model API, standing still means decaying against two moving dependencies at once. |
| El Profesor | 4.3 | 4.5 | smol developer — The contribution was decomposition: a specification produces an explicit file-layout plan first, and only then is each file generated against that plan as shared context. |
| La Inversora | 3.5 | 3.3 | Codel — A single developer's project with no entity behind it, from the wave of 2024 clones that the model vendors made redundant by shipping their own harnesses. |
| La Jefa | 3.0 | 2.8 | Codel — Self-hosting an unmaintained service that spawns containers and holds a provider key is a security finding with a web interface, and there is nobody to escalate to. |
| El Hacker | 5.5 | 4.8 | Codel — AGPL-3.0, one docker run with OPEN_AI_KEY and port 3000, and Ollama support, so the whole thing runs on my hardware with nothing phoning home. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.