Anthropic's terminal-native agentic coding tool and the category-defining harness, distinguished by its layered extensibility model (CLAUDE.md memory, Agent Skills, subagents, hooks, plugins, MCP) plus permission modes, checkpoints, and optional sandboxing, available from CLI/IDE/desktop/web with an Agent SDK for building on top.
Vendor CLI agentsproprietarysubscription✓ mcp✓ skills⛨ optional
browser-use · Browser Use Inc. (YC-backed, SF)
★ 103,000 · highMIT-licensed Python library (103k stars) that lets any LLM drive a real Chrome browser via DOM+vision instead of brittle selectors, now flanked by a desktop app and a usage-based cloud with stealth browsers, proxies, and a 24/7 'Browser Use Box' agent.
General / computer-useopen-sourcebyok✓ mcp✓ local models⛨ optional
OpenAI's open-source (Apache-2.0) Rust-rewritten terminal coding agent, distinguished by kernel-level OS sandboxing (Apple Seatbelt on macOS, Landlock/seccomp on Linux), a 272K-1M token context with GPT-5.x Codex models, MCP support, and cloud handoff to Codex web tasks.
Vendor CLI agentsopen-sourcesubscription✓ mcp✓ local models⛨ os-sandbox
OpenHands · All Hands AI / OpenHands
★ 79,895 · highFormerly OpenDevin, the leading open-source autonomous software-engineering platform: Docker-sandboxed agents that write code, run commands, browse, and open PRs, with a production agent SDK hitting 72% on SWE-bench Verified (Claude Sonnet 4.5) and its own broader OpenHands Index benchmark launched Jan 2026.
OSS coding harnessesopen-sourcefreemium✓ mcp✓ skills✓ local models⛨ container
CrewAI · CrewAI Inc.
★ 55,117 · highMIT-licensed Python framework (~55k stars) for role-based multi-agent 'Crews' plus event-driven 'Flows', with unified memory, hierarchical delegation, and a commercial AMP cloud platform (free tier, Pro from ~$25/mo, enterprise) that CrewAI says powered ~2B agentic executions in the year to January 2026.
Runtimes & SDKsopen-sourcefreemium✓ mcp✓ local models⛨ optional
Low-level graph-based agent orchestration runtime with automatic checkpointing, durable execution, human-in-the-loop interrupts, and streaming (v1.2 in May 2026 added typed streaming, per-node timeouts, and distributed runtime), used in production by Klarna, LinkedIn, Uber, and Replit and serving as the substrate under Deep Agents.
Runtimes & SDKsopen-sourcefreemium✓ mcp✓ local models
OpenAI's agent harness whose April 15, 2026 overhaul added a 'model-native harness' with Codex-like filesystem/shell tools, built-in compaction and memory, snapshot/rehydrate durable execution, handoffs, guardrails, tracing, and native sandbox execution via bring-your-own or built-in providers (E2B, Modal, Daytona, Cloudflare, Vercel, Blaxel, Runloop); non-OpenAI models supported via LiteLLM and Chat Completions-compatible endpoints.
Runtimes & SDKsopen-sourceusage-based✓ mcp✓ local models⛨ optional
Letta · Letta (formerly MemGPT, UC Berkeley spinout)
★ 23,701 · highApache-2.0 platform for stateful agents descended from MemGPT, distinguished by tiered self-editing memory persisted in a database (core memory in-context, archival out-of-context) plus 2026 research on git-based 'Context Repositories' and memory-native RL; in 2026 the company is consolidating around Letta Code, an open, model-agnostic memory-first coding agent harness (LettaBot archived May 2026 and folded in as Channels).
Runtimes & SDKsopen-sourcefreemium✓ mcp✓ local models⛨ optional
The AutoGen + Semantic Kernel convergence (1.0 GA April 2026) for .NET and Python, whose BUILD 2026 'Agent Harness' made production patterns first-class — shell/filesystem access, human-in-the-loop approvals, context compaction, todo tracking, plan/execute modes, AgentSkillsProvider skill discovery, and BackgroundAgentsProvider subagents — with hosted execution via Microsoft Foundry.
Runtimes & SDKsopen-sourcebyok✓ mcp✓ skills✓ local models⛨ optional
Anthropic's production agent library exposing the same harness that powers Claude Code (tool loop, file/bash/web tools, subagents, hooks, skills, MCP, permission checkpoints) in Python and TypeScript; the MIT-licensed SDK wraps the bundled Claude Code runtime and, as of 2026, underpins Anthropic Managed Agents with separate metered billing from June 15, 2026.
Runtimes & SDKsopen-sourceusage-based✓ mcp✓ skills⛨ optional
Enterprise-focused 'Droids' platform ($1.5B valuation after April 2026 Series C): autonomous agents that execute refactors, migrations and incident investigations end-to-end across CLI, desktop, SDK and remote 'Droid Computers' cloud workloads, with both local and cloud background agents on the $20 Pro tier and adoption at Nvidia, Adobe, Morgan Stanley and MongoDB; notably model-agnostic across frontier providers.
Cloud / backgroundproprietarysubscription✓ mcp⛨ optional
AWS's fully managed, configuration-defined agent harness (GA June 17, 2026): two API calls (CreateHarness/InvokeHarness) stand up an agent with its own isolated session environment, filesystem and shell, cross-session memory, a curated skills catalog, and web browsing, running any Bedrock, OpenAI, Gemini, or LiteLLM-compatible model with mid-session provider switching and no separate harness charge.
Runtimes & SDKsproprietaryusage-based✓ mcp✓ skills⛨ vm
Cloud web-agent from DeepMind-alumni startup H Company ($220M seed) that orchestrates sub-agents over its own Holo vision-language action models (92.2% WebVoyager at ~$0.13/task via open-sourced Surfer-H), with Holo 3 in 2026 targeting any-UI enterprise automation.
General / computer-useproprietaryfreemium✓ local models⛨ cloud-remote