Fractalvshostess
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Fractal
Trampoline AI · Terminal agent
#224OSS
Panel
4.63 spec wins
- Reliability
- 3.7
- Usefulness
- 4.2
- Cost
- 6.0
- Longevity
- 4.7
“The runtime is described as self-harnessed, which is a very confident way to say the loop calls itself.”
hostess
sungeer · Terminal agent
#164OSS
Panel
4.30 spec wins
- Reliability
- 3.8
- Usefulness
- 3.5
- Cost
- 7.2
- Longevity
- 2.8
“The complete slash command list is help, history, reset and exit, which is at least a feature table you can finish reading.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Fractal | hostess |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Terminal agent | Terminal agent |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos | macos, linux |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | No |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | No | No |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | Yes | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | No |
| Headless / CI mode | No | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | predict-rlm | DeepSeek, OpenAI-compatible |
| 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 | Yes |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 200 | 121 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Fractal | hostess | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 4.5 | 4.8 | hostess — Pick this if you want to read an entire coding agent in an afternoon; pick Aider if you want one that will still be useful next month. |
| El Crítico | 4.3 | 4.0 | Fractal — Execution routes through one specific sandbox backend that must be installed, logged into and given a network policy before a single turn will run. |
| El Profesor | 5.3 | 4.3 | Fractal — The agent is structured as a recursive language model rather than a flat loop, so decomposition is the control flow instead of a prompt convention. |
| La Inversora | 4.8 | 3.8 | Fractal — 200 stars and seventy-three public mentions in a year, from a named company, which is more attention than most projects here and more than the software has earned. |
| La Jefa | 3.5 | 3.5 | no preference |
| El Hacker | 5.5 | 5.8 | hostess — MIT, and the entire model configuration is environment variables against any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, which is the smallest correct configuration surface there is. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.