Core Coding Harnesses
The strict map contains 42 runtimes. Every name links to its official product page or canonical repository. Open-source rows include GitHub stars when a canonical repository was available. Stars are a dated popularity signal, not a quality score. Entries with detailed coverage in this guide keep that internal profile in the role cell.
Snapshot: 2026-09-09. GitHub stars are captured on the date shown in each project cell.
Legend: <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> = not established from the pinned sources; N/A = does not apply.
| Harness | Interface | Loop evidence | Licence | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AgentForge <small>★ 60 · 2026-08-28</small> | CLI, TUI | Confirmed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | The README documents a ReAct-style loop that repeats model requests, typed tool calls, and observations until completion. |
| agentic-harness <small>★ 84 · 2026-08-28</small> | CLI | Confirmed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | The README documents a coding-agent loop that iterates through model tool calls against a workspace. |
| aider <small>★ 48,420 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI | Claimed | Open source | Git-aware CLI pair programmer; edits in-repo, supports multiple models and MCP so agents see version control and tools. Guide profile |
| Amp | CLI, Desktop, Web | Claimed | Proprietary | Amp presents its product as an agentic coding tool. |
| Augment Code | CLI, IDE | Claimed | Proprietary | Augment presents its product as an AI coding platform with agent capabilities. |
| Autonomous Coding Harness <small>★ 7 · 2026-08-28</small> | CLI, TUI | Claimed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | The README claims a milestone-based autonomous coding loop with implementation, verification, and human checkpoints. |
| Claude Code | CLI, Desktop, IDE, Web | Claimed | Proprietary | Anthropic documents Claude Code as an agentic coding tool that reads codebases, edits files, and runs commands. |
| claw-code-agent <small>★ 543 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI, Web | Claimed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | Python reimplementation of the Claude Code agent architecture with zero external dependencies; interactive chat, streaming, plugin runtime, nested agent delegation, cost... |
| Cline <small>★ 66,707 · 2026-08-23</small> | IDE | Claimed | Open source | VS Code extension whose harness is a plan-then-act loop with per-step human approval and cost transparency; the VS Code integration is the UI shell. |
| Codex <small>★ 114,837 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI | Claimed | Open source | OpenAI's terminal coding agent. Guide profile |
| crush <small>★ 27,601 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI, TUI | Claimed | Restricted (fsl-1.1-mit) | Charm's terminal coding agent (Charm's fork of the original OpenCode). Guide profile |
| Cursor Agent | Chat, CLI, Desktop, IDE, Web | Claimed | Proprietary | Cursor presents Agent as its coding-agent product across editor and remote surfaces. |
| DeepSeek Harness <small>★ 201,064 · 2026-08-28</small> | CLI, Web | Claimed | Mit | The official repository describes a developer-preview agent harness built on the Cordis plugin framework. Guide profile |
| DeepSeek-Reasonix <small>★ 35,065 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI, TUI | Claimed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | DeepSeek-native terminal coding agent. |
| Devin | Chat, Web | Claimed | Proprietary | Cognition presents Devin as an AI software engineer. |
| Devin Desktop | Desktop, IDE | Claimed | Proprietary | Devin Desktop, formerly Windsurf, combines an IDE with local and cloud coding agents. |
| Factory Droid | CLI, Desktop, IDE, Web | Claimed | Proprietary | Factory presents Droids as software-development agents. |
| Gemini CLI <small>★ 106,626 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI | Claimed | Open source | Google's first-party terminal agent for Gemini. Guide profile |
| GitHub Copilot CLI | CLI | Claimed | Proprietary | GitHub presents Copilot CLI as a coding agent for the terminal. |
| goose <small>★ 53,295 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI, Desktop | Claimed | Open source | Block-originated Rust agent, now stewarded by the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation (aaif-goose/goose). Guide profile |
| Hermes <small>★ 234,688 · 2026-08-23</small> | Chat, CLI, TUI | Confirmed | Open source | Nous Research's self-improving agent: a learning loop turns experience into reusable skills, builds a persistent user model across sessions, and checkpoints state to disk with... |
| jcode <small>★ 18,308 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI | Confirmed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | Rust terminal coding agent pitched as the most RAM-efficient harness in its class; MCP support, multi-provider (Claude/OpenAI). |
| Jules | Web | Claimed | Proprietary | Google presents Jules as an asynchronous coding agent. |
| Junie | CLI, IDE, TUI | Claimed | Proprietary | JetBrains presents Junie as its coding agent. |
| Kilo Code <small>★ 26,978 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI, IDE | Claimed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | VS Code extension and CLI in the Cline/Roo-Code lineage : a natural pick now that Roo-Code is archived upstream. |
| Kimi Code CLI <small>★ 7,126 · 2026-08-28</small> | CLI, IDE, TUI | Claimed | Mit | The official repository describes Kimi Code CLI as an agentic coding tool for terminals and IDEs. |
| Kiro | CLI, Desktop, IDE, Web | Claimed | Proprietary | Kiro presents its product as an agentic development environment. |
| oh-my-pi <small>★ 26,658 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI, IDE, Web | Claimed | Open source | Terminal coding agent (fork of Pi) that wires the IDE into the harness: hash-anchored edits, a 32-tool loop tuned per-model, LSP rename/references/diagnostics on every write, a... |
| OpenHarness (HKUDS) <small>★ 15,492 · 2026-08-23</small> | Chat, CLI, TUI | Confirmed | Open source | Open agent harness with a built-in personal agent ("Ohmo") that runs across Feishu, Slack, Telegram, and Discord; core tool-use, skills, memory, multi-agent coordination with... |
| Open Interpreter <small>★ 68,121 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI | Claimed | Open source | Lightweight terminal coding agent oriented to open models (DeepSeek, Kimi, Qwen). |
| Open SWE <small>★ 10,624 · 2026-08-28</small> | Chat, Web | Claimed | Mit | The official repository describes Open SWE as an asynchronous coding agent for repository tasks. |
| opencode <small>★ 200,557 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI, TUI | Claimed | Open source | Open-source terminal coding agent (formerly sst/opencode; transferred to anomalyco). Guide profile |
| OpenCode Harness <small>★ 148 · 2026-08-28</small> | CLI, TUI, Web | Confirmed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | The README documents a coding-agent loop with tools, permissions, traces, evaluation, and repair feedback. |
| OpenHands <small>★ 84,844 · 2026-08-23</small> | Web | Claimed | Restricted ((multi-license)) | Dockerized software-engineering agent. Guide profile |
| OpenHarness <small>★ 12 · 2026-08-28</small> | CLI, TUI | Confirmed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | The README documents a provider-to-tools agent loop and runtime injection points. |
| pi <small>★ 95,747 · 2026-08-23</small> | TUI | Claimed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | The upstream AI agent toolkit behind this list's oh-my-pi fork: a unified multi-provider LLM API, agent loop, and TUI shell providing the harness that oh-my-pi's Rust rewrite... |
| qwen-code <small>★ 27,310 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI | Claimed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | Alibaba's official terminal coding agent, forked from Gemini CLI's agent loop and retuned for Qwen models. |
| Replit Agent | Web | Claimed | Proprietary | Replit presents Agent as a product that builds applications from user goals. |
| Roo Code <small>★ 24,326 · 2026-08-23</small> | IDE | Claimed | Open source | VS Code/Cursor extension in the Cline lineage. |
| Spettro <small>★ 33 · 2026-08-28</small> | CLI, TUI | Confirmed | <abbr title="Not established from the pinned sources">?</abbr> | The README documents autonomous goal runs, native tool calls, subagent workflows, and verification loops. |
| SWE-agent <small>★ 20,112 · 2026-08-23</small> | CLI | Claimed | Open source | LM-driven harness built for SWE-bench: edit state, command execution, and issue-focused loop: the reference agent stack next to the benchmark itself. Guide profile |
| Warp Agent | CLI, TUI, Web | Claimed | Proprietary | Warp Agent is a standalone terminal coding agent with interactive PTY support and optional cloud handoff. Guide profile |
DeepSeek Harness needs a maturity caveat. The official repository describes dsh as a developer preview and warns that compatibility may change. Its plugin architecture, permissions, sandbox choices, and local-first processing do not make untrusted repositories safe by default. See the DeepSeek Harness profile for setup, architecture, and security boundaries.
Creator interviews as supplementary evidence
Official documentation and canonical repositories remain the source of truth for current product behavior. Creator interviews add dated design rationale that a feature table cannot capture:
- Boris Cherny's Building Claude Code interview traces the product's move from a chatbot to a tool-using agent, while the permission discussion explains the layered controls behind command execution.
- Dax Raad's Building OpenCode interview documents the open-source, provider-neutral runtime positioning. The later control-plane discussion separates organization-wide provider, permission, budget, and rate-limit controls from the runtime itself.
These interviews do not upgrade a generated evidence state on their own. They are dated testimony, so current availability, licence, and feature behavior still require a direct official source. The practitioner video evidence ledger records the short verbatim, timestamp, and boundary for each source.