SymphonyvsVibe Kanban
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
Symphony
OpenAI · Agent harness
OSS
Panel
4.81 spec wins
- Reliability
- 4.7
- Usefulness
- 4.8
- Cost
- 5.5
- Longevity
- 4.0
“The release binary is symphony-v0.0.1, so the version number doubles as the maintenance plan.”
Vibe Kanban
Bloop AI · Agent harness
OSSMCP
Panel
5.03 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.3
- Usefulness
- 5.2
- Cost
- 7.0
- Longevity
- 2.7
“The kanban board outlived the company, which is the first time a kanban board has finished anything.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | Symphony | Vibe Kanban |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Runs | local | local |
| Platforms | macos, linux | macos, linux |
| Context window | not documented | not documented |
| Protocols | ||
| MCP client | No | No |
| MCP server | No | Yes |
| Capabilities | ||
| Runs terminal commands | Yes | Yes |
| Multi-file edits | No | No |
| Git operations | Yes | Yes |
| Browser control | No | Yes |
| Sandboxed execution | No | No |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | Yes | No |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | Codex (OpenAI) | via managed agents (Claude Code, Codex, Gemini CLI, GitHub Copilot, Amp, Cursor, OpenCode, Droid, Qwen Code) |
| Bring your own model | No | No |
| Local models | No | No |
| Cost | ||
| Pricing model | free | free |
| Starts at | $0/mo | $0/mo |
| Free tier | Yes | Yes |
| Bring your own key | No | No |
| Openness | ||
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
| License | Apache-2.0 | Apache-2.0 |
| GitHub stars | 27,502 | 28,235 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | Symphony | Vibe Kanban | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 4.8 | 5.3 | Vibe Kanban — Do not adopt: Bloop closed on 10 April 2026 and the hosted side is gone; the board still runs locally, but pick Agent Orchestrator or Superset for a workflow you will keep. |
| El Crítico | 3.5 | 5.3 | Vibe Kanban — Every card runs an unsandboxed agent in a worktree on your machine, and the maintainer is now whoever shows up; issues get fixed at the speed of volunteers. |
| El Profesor | 5.5 | 5.8 | Vibe Kanban — A worktree, a terminal and a dev server per card, an in-app browser preview, and an MCP server so agents can drive the board; the architecture is sound and now unowned. |
| La Inversora | 4.5 | 3.0 | Symphony — OpenAI wrote an Apache-2.0 spec in April 2026 to sell Codex sessions by the boardful and disclaimed maintenance on day one; 27,000 stars of free distribution. |
| La Jefa | 4.3 | 4.0 | Symphony — Elixir and OTP through mise, Codex and git on the host, tracker credentials for Linear, GitHub Issues, Jira, Asana or GitLab, and nobody on call; not yet. |
| El Hacker | 6.0 | 7.0 | Vibe Kanban — Apache-2.0, 28,000 stars and an MCP server built in; the community fork already happened, it just kept the name. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.