dirivsRinger
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
diri
cristicretu · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
6.92 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.8
- Usefulness
- 6.5
- Cost
- 8.3
- Longevity
- 5.8
“It runs plain shells beside the agents, so a human and four robots can now miss the same deadline in parallel.”
Ringer
Nate Jones Media · Agent harness
Panel
6.91 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.8
- Usefulness
- 7.3
- Cost
- 7.8
- Longevity
- 5.5
“A local page shows every worker's token burn as it happens, which is either observability or a very slow slot machine.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | diri | Ringer |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| 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 | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | YesEdits come from the agent running in the session; diri supplies the worktree, the status and the persistence. | YesFiles are changed by the worker CLI Ringer spawns for each task, each in its own directory. |
| Git operations | Yes | YesA manifest can run each task in a detached git worktree; Ringer does not commit or open pull requests itself. |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | YesRuns are driven from a JSON manifest with no interactive step, and a mock engine in the sample config lets the stack be exercised in CI without an API bill. |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini | Codex, Grok, any CLI configured as an engine |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | No |
| License | Apache-2.0 | PolyForm-Shield-1.0.0 |
| GitHub stars | 351 | 294 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | diri | Ringer | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 7.3 | 7.3 | no preference |
| El Crítico | 6.8 | 6.5 | diri — Sessions run on remote hosts as well as locally, and nothing documented describes what a remote run does when the link drops mid-task. |
| El Profesor | 7.3 | 7.8 | Ringer — Pass and fail are decided by executing the task's own check command, and a baseline mode validates those checks before a single worker is spawned. |
| La Inversora | 6.0 | 6.3 | Ringer — 280 stars and a media company as the vendor: the tool is credible, and tools published beside an audience are usually content before they are products. |
| La Jefa | 7.0 | 6.5 | diri — A signed and notarized universal build delivered through a self-updating Homebrew cask is the first distribution story on this shelf I could hand to sixty people unchanged. |
| El Hacker | 7.0 | 7.0 | no preference |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.