MagivsZenith
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Magi
MistRipple · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
5.90 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 6.0
- Cost
- 6.3
- Longevity
- 5.3
“Its tool list includes image generation, because the thing your failing test suite needed was an illustration.”
Zenith
Intelligent Internet · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
5.92 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.7
- Usefulness
- 6.3
- Cost
- 6.2
- Longevity
- 5.5
“The research finding is that long agent runs fail by stopping too early, which makes them the most relatable thing in the stack.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Magi | Zenith |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows, web | macos, linux |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | Yes |
| 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 | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | YesRole agents for execution, exploration, architecture, testing and review run in parallel under a mainline agent, each with its own model. | YesThe orchestrator dynamically allocates worker and tester sessions and can register reusable skills between turns. |
| Headless / CI mode | No | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | OpenAI, Anthropic | via managed agents (Claude Code, Codex, Hermes) |
| 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 | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| GitHub stars | 216 | 320 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Magi | Zenith | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 5.8 | 6.3 | Zenith — Pick it for work that takes days rather than minutes; pick a plain terminal agent when the task is small enough that stopping early is not the failure you fear. |
| El Crítico | 5.0 | 5.8 | Zenith — The orchestrator decides each turn whether to spawn more workers and testers, so the depth of a run is set by the same component that judges whether the work is finished. |
| El Profesor | 7.0 | 6.0 | Magi — One run trace records the goal, the derived tasks, every tool call, the resulting changes and the verification results, which makes a completed run auditable end to end. |
| La Inversora | 5.5 | 5.3 | Magi — 215 stars, a permissive licence, no company, and an install path that begins with building the desktop package from source. Nothing here is trying to be sold yet. |
| La Jefa | 5.0 | 4.8 | Magi — Free at sixty desks and governed nowhere: the permission layer it advertises is local to each installation, with its whole state living in a directory under each home folder. |
| El Hacker | 7.3 | 7.5 | Zenith — Apache-2.0, launched with uv run, and it orchestrates over MCP and ACP, so the sessions it drives are the agents I already installed rather than a captive runtime. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.