Contrabassvsmngr
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Contrabass
junhoyeo · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
7.11 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.8
- Usefulness
- 7.3
- Cost
- 8.2
- Longevity
- 6.0
“Every issue gets a worktree under workspaces/ named after the ticket, so your filesystem is now a faithful copy of your backlog.”
mngr
Imbue · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
7.12 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.7
- Usefulness
- 7.3
- Cost
- 8.3
- Longevity
- 6.0
“It gives you push, pull, clone and snapshot for agents, so you can now have a merge conflict with a colleague you invented.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Contrabass | mngr |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | local, cloud, sandbox |
| Platforms | macos, linux | macos, linux |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | No |
| MCP server | Yes | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | YesFiles are changed by the agent runner Contrabass launches in each issue's worktree. | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | YesAgents can be placed in Docker containers, on Modal or on remote hosts, with SSH key isolation, network allowlists and full container control. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | YesA --no-tui flag runs the orchestrator headless with events logged to stdout. | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Codex app-server, OpenCode, oh-my-opencode, OMX, OMC | via managed agents (Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode) |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yesmngr ships no model; the model comes from whichever agent CLI it launches. |
| Local models | No | No |
| 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 | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 223 | 411 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Contrabass | mngr | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.5 | 7.5 | no preference |
| El Crítico | 6.8 | 6.8 | no preference |
| El Profesor | 7.5 | 6.8 | Contrabass — Teams mode separates plan, exec and verify into phases with branch advance verification and deterministic retry backoff, which is a pipeline rather than a loop. |
| La Inversora | 6.5 | 6.5 | no preference |
| La Jefa | 6.3 | 7.0 | mngr — Key isolation per agent, network allowlists and full container control across sixty engineers, and the cost is compute rather than seats, which is a line I already forecast. |
| El Hacker | 8.0 | 8.0 | no preference |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.