Codewhalevsjcode
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Codewhale
Hmbown · Terminal agent
#181OSSMCP
Panel
5.82 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.5
- Usefulness
- 5.5
- Cost
- 7.3
- Longevity
- 4.7
“Installs on Android through Termux, so you can run a coding agent on the phone you use to ignore your coding agent.”
jcode
jcode · Terminal agent
#166OSSMCP
Panel
5.80 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.2
- Usefulness
- 5.7
- Cost
- 8.3
- Longevity
- 4.2
“You can spawn several AI teammates in parallel, which is how you end up holding a standup with yourself.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Codewhale | jcode |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Terminal agent | Terminal agent |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | not documented | per-model, up to 1M where the model supports it |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | hosted providers, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang | any |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | Yes | Yes |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | byok |
| Starts at | $0/mo | n/a |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 41,039 | 38 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Codewhale | jcode | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 6.5 | 6.0 | Codewhale — Pick Codewhale if you want a Rust terminal agent that runs on Ollama with a Plan mode that only reads; pick OpenCode if you want more providers and a bigger community. |
| El Crítico | 5.5 | 5.0 | Codewhale — It was deepseek-tui until recently and carries the old config and sessions forward; the rename is fresh, and the project is one maintainer wide. |
| El Profesor | 5.8 | 6.5 | jcode — A read-only Plan Mode produces a structured plan before any action, and the same tool implementations run locally, over SSH and inside Docker, which keeps behaviour identical across environments. |
| La Inversora | 3.8 | 5.0 | jcode — There is no company, no funding and no price here, only a personal project entering the most crowded category on this board against several funded incumbents. |
| La Jefa | 5.5 | 4.5 | Codewhale — A single-maintainer terminal agent with shell completions and a non-interactive mode, no SSO, no admin and no vendor; approved with conditions for engineers who already hold keys. |
| El Hacker | 7.5 | 8.0 | jcode — MIT, a single Go binary, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint including my own, and MCP servers declared in an mcp_servers block taking stdio and http entries. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.