mini-SWE-agentvspi
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
mini-SWE-agent
SWE-agent (Princeton and Stanford) · Terminal agent
#8OSS
Panel
6.92 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.3
- Usefulness
- 5.5
- Cost
- 8.8
- Longevity
- 7.0
“One hundred lines of Python, which is fewer than most competitors spend on their pricing page.”
pi
Earendil Inc. · Terminal agent
#10OSS
Panel
6.81 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.5
- Usefulness
- 6.5
- Cost
- 7.3
- Longevity
- 7.0
“A coding agent that ships themes, which is the first time anyone has cared what the terminal looks like while a file gets deleted.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | mini-SWE-agent | pi |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Terminal agent | Terminal agent |
| Runs | local, sandbox | 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 | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | No |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | Yes | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | No | No |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | Yes |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | any via litellm | OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, OpenRouter, llama.cpp |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | Yes | Yes |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | byok | byok |
| Starts at | n/a | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | Yes | Yes |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| GitHub stars | 8,410 | 114,384 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | mini-SWE-agent | pi | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 6.8 | 7.5 | pi — Pick pi if you want a terminal agent small enough to read in an afternoon and extend in TypeScript; pick OpenCode if your workflow already depends on MCP servers. |
| El Crítico | 6.5 | 6.8 | pi — Extensions are TypeScript modules loaded into the agent's own process, so a package is a supply chain, and the install line already says --ignore-scripts. |
| El Profesor | 8.0 | 7.3 | mini-SWE-agent — The reference harness for the SWE-bench bash-only leaderboard: one bash action per turn via subprocess.run, a linear history, no tool-calling API, and Gemini 3 Pro reported above 74% on Verified. |
| La Inversora | 6.8 | 5.5 | mini-SWE-agent — No company, a Princeton and Stanford lab with 6,938 stars; the funding is grants and the exit is a paper, which is more stable than half the cap tables on this board. |
| La Jefa | 5.0 | 5.5 | pi — Sixty engineers signing in with /login to personal subscriptions from a work terminal is a licensing question before it is a tooling one; no SSO, no vendor to invoice; not yet. |
| El Hacker | 8.5 | 8.5 | no preference |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.