EfritvsRefact.ai
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Efrit
Steve Yegge · IDE extension
#259OSS
Panel
5.51 spec wins
- Reliability
- 4.7
- Usefulness
- 5.8
- Cost
- 7.3
- Longevity
- 4.3
“Three entry points named efrit-chat, efrit-do and efrit-agent, because Emacs was never going to settle for one.”
Refact.ai
Refact.ai (Small Magellanic Cloud AI) · IDE extension
#192OSSMCP
Panel
5.36 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.0
- Usefulness
- 5.3
- Cost
- 7.3
- Longevity
- 3.3
“Ships eight agent modes including one called buddy, for when the other seven feel too professional.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Efrit | Refact.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | IDE extension | IDE extension |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux, windows |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | Yes |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | YesBoth shell_exec and eval_sexp are available, and the README warns that AI-generated code executes directly in your Emacs. | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | YesRead-only version-control tools — status, diff, log and blame — are exposed to the model. | Yes |
| Browser control | No | Yes |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | No | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Claude | Claude, GPT, Gemini, OpenRouter, Ollama |
| Bring your own model | No | Yes |
| Local models | No | 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 | unspecified | BSD-3-Clause |
| GitHub stars | 455 | 69 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Efrit | Refact.ai | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 6.3 | 5.5 | Efrit — Pick it if Emacs is where you actually work and you want the agent inside it; pick Aider in a terminal if you are only visiting Emacs for the keybindings. |
| El Crítico | 5.3 | 5.3 | no preference |
| El Profesor | 6.0 | 6.0 | no preference |
| La Inversora | 5.8 | 3.0 | Efrit — One author, 454 stars, no company, and a hard binding to a single model vendor: the survival question here is not funding, it is whether one API keeps its shape. |
| La Jefa | 4.8 | 4.0 | Efrit — Nothing per seat and nothing to roll out: the sixty engineers who would use this are the four who already run Emacs, and no record survives of what any of them did. |
| El Hacker | 5.3 | 7.8 | Refact.ai — BSD-3-Clause, providers in ~/.config/refact/ including Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM and even GitHub Copilot as a backend, project state in .refact/, MCP documented in the wiki; entirely mine. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.