Agent Tools: Beyond Claude Code
Claude Code is one tool in a field that has expanded dramatically since 2024. Dozens of agent frameworks, autonomous coders, and multi-agent systems have shipped, each with different trade-offs. This page maps that field so you can decide when Claude Code is the right call, and when something else fits better.
What this page covers: terminal coding agents, autonomous coders, multi-agent orchestration frameworks, and agent orchestration tooling. Claude Code's own multi-agent capabilities (agent teams, event-driven workflows, programmatic usage) are documented separately, linked throughout.
What it does not cover: editor-only comparisons. IDEs, ADEs, and products that combine several interfaces are covered in AI Ecosystem §6. A hybrid product appears here only when its coding agent is also usable as a terminal runtime. Multi-Claude orchestration tools (Gas Town, multiclaude, Conductor desktop app) are in Third-Party Tools: Multi-Agent Orchestration.
For the full field across CLI, IDE, and cloud agents, use the Agent Harness Landscape. For the loop, context, tools, permissions, recovery, observability, and automated harness optimization, read Agent Harness Engineering. For explicit feedback loops, workflow graphs, stopping rules, and responsibility boundaries, read Loop & Graph Engineering. The glossary separates runtime harnesses from repository harnesses, evaluation harnesses, orchestrators, and meta-harnesses.