CodewhalevsOpenHarness
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.”
OpenHarness
zhijiewong · Terminal agent
#209OSSMCP
Panel
5.70 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.5
- Usefulness
- 5.8
- Cost
- 7.7
- Longevity
- 3.8
“It has agent roles, so the same model can now let you down under several different job titles.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Codewhale | OpenHarness |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Terminal agent | Terminal agent |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| 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 | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | hosted providers, Ollama, vLLM, SGLang | Ollama, OpenAI, any LLM |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | Yes | 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 | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 41,039 | 102 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Codewhale | OpenHarness | 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 | 5.5 | no preference |
| El Profesor | 5.8 | 6.0 | OpenHarness — The project ships its own evaluation suite, which is more than most of this board attempts, and publishes no results from running it. |
| La Inversora | 3.8 | 4.5 | OpenHarness — Ninety-six stars, fourteen weekly package installs and six on the Python side: the audience for this is smaller than the feature list implies by two orders of magnitude. |
| La Jefa | 5.5 | 5.3 | 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 | 7.0 | Codewhale — MIT Rust, Ollama, vLLM and SGLang for local models, a config.example.toml to copy, MCP servers attachable, and builds from Cargo, Nix, Docker or Scoop; it runs offline. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.