SinewvsSwarmForge
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Sinew
Paseru · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
5.31 spec wins
- Reliability
- 4.7
- Usefulness
- 5.3
- Cost
- 7.2
- Longevity
- 3.8
“It is built on Tauri, React, Rust, Monaco and xterm, which is five technologies stacked up to avoid opening a terminal.”
SwarmForge
Robert C. Martin · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
5.32 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.5
- Usefulness
- 5.8
- Cost
- 5.3
- Longevity
- 4.5
“The role packs are sold as a two-pack, a four-pack and a six-pack, which is the first agent framework priced like beer.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Sinew | SwarmForge |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux, windows | macos, linux |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | Yes | No |
| MCP server | No | No |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | Yes | Yes |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | No | No |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | No | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, Kimi, OpenRouter | Claude Code, Codex, Grok, Copilot CLI |
| Bring your own model | Yes | YesBackends are agent CLIs rather than raw models: grok, codex, claude or copilot, with remaining arguments passed straight through. |
| Local models | No | No |
| 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 | MIT | unspecified |
| GitHub stars | 66 | 3,944 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Sinew | SwarmForge | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 5.8 | 5.5 | Sinew — Pick this if you want to choose between planning and acting explicitly; pick a terminal agent if a desktop application around your editor is not something you wanted. |
| El Crítico | 5.3 | 4.8 | Sinew — One sign-in route uses provider OAuth flows reserved for first-party clients, and the project's own documentation records the risk of doing that. |
| El Profesor | 6.0 | 5.8 | Sinew — The agent's visible surface is whatever the operator leaves enabled, and system prompts are injected from two named repository files rather than assembled invisibly. |
| La Inversora | 4.3 | 5.3 | SwarmForge — 3,717 stars for a project whose distribution is one author's reputation, with no licence, no price and no entity behind it. |
| La Jefa | 4.3 | 4.0 | Sinew — Free across sixty desktops, and because each install is reshaped by the developer who runs it, no two of my engineers would be using the same agent. |
| El Hacker | 6.0 | 6.5 | SwarmForge — It is worktrees and tmux with four interchangeable agent backends and arguments passed straight through, which is exactly how I would have built it. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.