whipvszerostack
Generated from the two spec rows. Green marks the better value where a spec has a clear direction. Everything else is just different.
whip
Context Labs · Terminal agent
#109OSSMCP
Panel
6.51 spec wins
- Reliability
- 5.7
- Usefulness
- 6.5
- Cost
- 8.3
- Longevity
- 5.3
“Its roadmap cites which project each idea was taken from, which is more attribution than most research papers manage.”
zerostack
Giuseppe Della Vedova · Terminal agent
#72OSSMCP
Panel
6.54 spec wins
- Reliability
- 6.0
- Usefulness
- 6.0
- Cost
- 8.0
- Longevity
- 6.0
“It is called zerostack and it is inspired by two other agents, which is a stack of roughly three.”
Spec by spec
| Spec | whip | zerostack |
|---|---|---|
| Architecture | ||
| Category | Terminal agent | Terminal agent |
| Runs | local | local, sandbox |
| Platforms | macos, linux | 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 | Yes`/worktree` and `/wt-merge` handle worktrees, merge, push and cleanup; the README labels git-worktree integration experimental. |
| Browser control | YesThe documentation index lists browser and computer-use alongside MCP; the README itself does not describe the feature. | NoOnly Exa-backed WebFetch and WebSearch are documented; there is no browser automation. |
| Sandboxed execution | No | YesSandboxing uses bubblewrap on Linux or zerobox on macOS, not Docker; `--sandbox` is best-effort and runs unsandboxed if neither is present unless `--sandbox-required` is passed. |
| Multi-agent orchestration | Yes | Yes |
| Headless / CI mode | No | YesThrough `zerostack -p` and the `--loop` family of flags; the loop system is labelled experimental. |
| Models | ||
| Backbone | inference.net, OpenRouter, any OpenAI-compatible endpoint | OpenRouter, OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Ollama, vLLM, LiteLLM |
| Bring your own model | Yes | Yes |
| Local models | YesAny OpenAI-compatible endpoint works as a provider, which covers a locally served model. | Yes |
| 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 | GPL-3.0-only |
| GitHub stars | 1,064 | 1,697 |
Which one would each critic pick
| Critic | whip | zerostack | Pick |
|---|---|---|---|
| El Juez | — | — | not enough reviews |
| El Amigo | 6.8 | 6.8 | no preference |
| El Crítico | 6.0 | 6.3 | zerostack — The isolation flag is best-effort: with neither backend present it proceeds without protection unless you also pass the flag that makes it mandatory. |
| El Profesor | 7.3 | 7.0 | whip — Per-path file locks and channel-based background subagents put parallelism exactly where two agents do not conflict and serialise them where they do. |
| La Inversora | 6.0 | 5.0 | whip — A harness that ships pointing at one inference provider is a distribution channel for that provider, and the question is what Context Labs gets for it. |
| La Jefa | 5.3 | 5.5 | zerostack — Several capabilities are Cargo compile-time features, so what my engineers actually have depends on how each of them installed it, and I cannot standardise that. |
| El Hacker | 7.5 | 8.5 | zerostack — GPL-3.0-only, `cargo install zerostack`, and the provider list runs OpenRouter, Ollama, vLLM and LiteLLM, so the model is mine to place. |
Picks are derived from each critic's own scores. Humans vote on matchups on the duels page.