Cowork Forgevssmol developer
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Cowork Forge
sopaco · Autonomous SWE
#258OSS
Panel
4.74 spec wins
- Reliability
- 4.0
- Usefulness
- 4.3
- Cost
- 6.5
- Longevity
- 4.0
“The engineer agent writes the code and then writes the delivery report, which is the most realistic simulation of a development team yet.”
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 | Cowork Forge | smol developer |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Autonomous SWE | Autonomous SWE |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux | 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 | Yes | No |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | No |
| Headless / CI mode | No | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode | GPT, Claude |
| Bring your own model | Yes | No |
| Local models | No | No |
| 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 | 97 | 12,186 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Cowork Forge | smol developer | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 5.0 | 3.5 | Cowork Forge — Pick this only for a greenfield idea you want turned into a first draft; pick a terminal agent you steer turn by turn when the repository already has users in it. |
| El Crítico | 4.0 | 3.0 | Cowork Forge — The requirements document, the architecture and the code all come out of the same system, so the acceptance criteria inherit every assumption the implementation got wrong. |
| El Profesor | 5.0 | 4.5 | Cowork Forge — Each role applies an actor-critic pattern for self-review, with human validation inserted at critical decision points. The pattern is named; the criteria the critic applies are not. |
| La Inversora | 4.5 | 3.3 | Cowork Forge — 92 stars, one author, no company, and the models underneath belong to Anthropic, OpenAI and OpenCode. Every unit of value this creates is captured one layer down. |
| La Jefa | 4.0 | 2.8 | Cowork Forge — Free for sixty engineers, macOS and Linux only, and there is no approval queue, no audit record and no way to answer who authorised the architecture it invented on Tuesday. |
| El Hacker | 5.8 | 4.8 | Cowork Forge — MIT and it drives Claude Code, Codex or OpenCode, so the subscription I already hold does the work. There is no MCP client, so my own servers never enter the picture. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.