minionvsVolt
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
minion
Sentdex · Terminal agent
#50OSS
Panel
6.52 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.8
- Usefulness
- 6.5
- Cost
- 8.7
- Longevity
- 4.8
“It renders the model's separate reasoning stream as a thinking block, so you can watch it talk itself into the bug.”
Volt
Voltropy · Terminal agent
#138OSS
Panel
6.51 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 6.5
- Cost
- 7.7
- Longevity
- 5.7
“The documented source install clones volt and then changes into a directory called voltcode.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | minion | Volt |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Terminal agent | Terminal agent |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | 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 | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | No | YesAgentic-Map spawns a full sub-agent session per input item, each with tool access and an optional read_only flag. |
| Headless / CI mode | No | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | any OpenAI-compatible endpoint, llama.cpp, vLLM, SGLang, OpenAI, Z.ai | OpenAI, Anthropic, provider-agnostic via OpenCode's provider layer |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | YesMINION_BASE_URL points at any OpenAI-compatible server; local llama.cpp, vLLM and SGLang are the primary target. | 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 | 337 | 299 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | minion | Volt | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 6.8 | 6.5 | minion — Pick it if you run a small model on your own machine and want the context window spent on your code; pick a full harness if you pay for a frontier model anyway. |
| El Crítico | 5.8 | 6.0 | Volt — Session management has been replaced wholesale inside a fork of a project that still ships its own releases, so every upstream change is now a merge decision. |
| El Profesor | 7.3 | 7.3 | no preference |
| La Inversora | 5.8 | 6.5 | Volt — Voltropy is not really shipping a terminal tool here; it is showing a component to the companies that would rather buy one than build it. |
| La Jefa | 5.3 | 5.3 | no preference |
| El Hacker | 8.0 | 7.3 | minion — MIT, MINION_BASE_URL points at llama.cpp, vLLM or SGLang, and when a server has no native tool calling it falls back to parsing the text, which is the detail that gives it away. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.