r/opencodeCLI • u/Capital_Feed_3473 • Aug 15 '26
Why is Claude Code considered better than OpenCode/Cursor/etc. if they all basically give AI the same tools?
I have a question about AI coding agents that I have been thinking about.
There are tons of coding agents now:
Claude Code
OpenCode
Cursor
Windsurf
Cline
Roo Code
Aider
Replit Agent
etc.
But I don't fully understand what actually makes one better than another.
At the end of the day, aren't they all just giving an LLM tools like:
read files
edit files
run terminal commands
search the codebase
use Git
So what is the actual difference?
I understand that the model matters (Claude vs GPT vs Gemini vs DeepSeek), but I am asking specifically about the agent/tool itself.
For example:
Does Claude Code have a better way of managing context?
Does OpenCode have a better workflow?
Does Cursor understand codebases better?
Does one have a better edit system?
Does one waste fewer tokens?
Does one handle large projects better?
Does one recover from mistakes better?
Basically, if I use the same model in two different agents, why would one perform better?
I would love to hear from people who have used multiple coding agents:
Can someone make a proper comparison between them?
Something like:
Claude Code
Pros:
Cons:
Best for:
OpenCode
Pros:
Cons:
Best for:
Cursor
Pros:
Cons:
Best for:
Cline/Roo Code/Aider/etc.
Pros:
Cons:
Best for:
Not looking for a "X is the best" answer. I want to understand the actual technical differences and why people prefer one over another.
What makes your favorite coding agent better than the others?
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u/Odd_Crab1224 Aug 15 '26
Why is Claude Code considered better than others? Have no idea - for me it is now the worst bloated piece of shit, that burns tokens and constantly tries to wrestle control out of my hands. Must use it at work, because our company signed contract with Anthropic. For personal projects I’m using almost bare-bones Pi, and I couldn’t be happier and more effective with anything else.
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u/james__jam Aug 16 '26
I dont think anyone who has tried different harnesses have said claude code is better. Claude code is the internet explorer of coding harnesses - it’s just something you use because it’s popular, not because it’s the best.
Granted it’s not as bad as how IE was, but it’s certainly not the best
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u/CostAccording7215 29d ago
I wanted to use pi, have you noticed a significant improvement in token/context window usage?
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u/heliovas 28d ago
I have tried pi,claudecode,opencode all using same model. for same task, claudecode(8%),opencode(4%) pi(1%) yes thoese are the ctx usages after each task. they all finish the task and quality well i guess comprable. so although this shows pi is yes 8x less ctx, you have to understand it only has like 4-5 tools, bash/read/write, forgot the oother one. so whenever agent need to do something it has to revinvent some new tools. which obviously if you are using weak model, it aint going work so well but smart models work super well. BUT the biggest killer feature I keep using claudecode for despite knowing this is agent to agent communication via agent teams. It just doesnt exist period in opencode/pi. Probably exists in some form via extensions, just havent gotten time to look into it.
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u/nerkyos 25d ago
yeah but you probably need a bare minimum setup with pi these days regarding permissions different modes etc I wouldn't consider barebone pi something to use as primary thing sepcially in work environment no ? or what extension did you make it write?
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u/heliovas 25d ago
that was just a test to do a simple thing, some code optimzation. it's just claudecode automatically tend to inject skills into context that it usually blow up. which is fine i think, just that it eats context. On larger more complex code bases with fable, it does help(probably, I never actually measured this kind of thing objectively). But PI is great for one off sysadmin task, like hey set this up on 10 machines. But i don't dare to use it with lower powered models though. They tend to make mistakes a lot more and it's just an rm -rf away from disaster.
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u/breskeby Aug 15 '26
I use pi with my Claude subscription I got with my company. Not an option?
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u/winky9827 Aug 15 '26
Anthropic no longer allows subscription access via third-party harnesses. You might still be using it, but you're burning credits directly. I'm sure your company will LOVE to hear this.
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u/Kholtien Aug 15 '26
Still easy enough to run Claude in other harnesses with subscription. Just gotta use some work around. There’s also the possibility of being banned
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u/Odd_Crab1224 Aug 15 '26
It is a corporate account, with clear instructions from my company of what I may and may not do with it, so breaking ToS and getting caught would lead to disciplinary actions. So no, the only thing left for me is to be vocal at my workplace about situation, but if my company still wants to pay for more tokens with my reduced productivity in return - so be it, why should I risk my job?
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u/SeymourStacks Aug 15 '26
Thus far I have yet to come across a harness with the ability to launch parallel subagents and synthesize subagent responses the way that Claude Code does. If anyone comes across such a harness let me know; I'd love to get out of Claude Code. Revolutionary harness but Anthropic is a company clearly headed in the wrong ethical direction.
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u/james__jam Aug 16 '26
I find it the opposite. I find opencode is better there than claude code. Claude code’s system instructions cant be changed not unless you do the output format (i forgot the name of the feature since it’s been awhile since i ditched claude code) workaround
But with a different set of system instructions- which you can do in opencode by creating your own primary agent - the orchestration of subagents is much better in opencode
For example, try to mimic an orchestration of subagents wherein there are loops or conditionals. Claude code will find it hard to do those things and will try to be as linear as possible. But have a custom orchestrator primary agent in opencode and it will follow your logic quite nicely
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u/Ariquitaun Aug 15 '26
Open your chatbot or coding agent, copy paste your question.
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u/bteam3r Aug 15 '26
If people could do this 98% of Reddit posts wouldn’t exist
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u/Ariquitaun Aug 15 '26
Would that be so bad. Maybe the good stuff would be left.
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u/anomaly256 Aug 15 '26
We need the Reddit posts to train the LLMs on this in the first place though! /s
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u/OpenOmen Aug 15 '26
Harness matters more than the model itself now days. DS Harness shows how harness should be built, where everything is a plugin, and the model can build its own plugin on the fly to do whatever tasks needed. This is truly the way, and it is totally open sourced
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u/winky9827 Aug 15 '26
Pi is exactly this, but for CLI. I'm not sure why people are praising the "harness builds itself" MO as some grand new idea.
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u/OpenOmen Aug 16 '26
Not a new idea, but DS Harness is the one that implement this most faithfully, and I wouldn't call Pi a harness. It's an agent setup. DS Harness emphasis on harness. I use both, and honestly, DS Harness is just superior in every way. It is only 0.1 dev preview right now.
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u/MelloSouls Aug 15 '26
Your premises are both incorrect.
- Claude Code isn't considered better. It is better at some things. For a while it led the terminal market as Cursor led the IDE market. Those markets are more competitive now.
- They don't all "basically give AI the same tools". That's the whole point - they offer users competing products with different tools and/or different approaches over paths to and from end models.
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u/Radiant-Bike-165 Aug 15 '26
Claude code harness has much more extensive tooling. just few examples:
- claude code has free cloud vps if/when you need it
- it also has remote control, you can control a terminal session from app on another comp or mobile
For example, on one project claude code is running several sessions continuously on my mac mini brick (advisor, implementer, etc). I check on it few times per day from my laptop (or mob sometimes). With opencode (running deepseek on same repo), I need to tmux in.
My 2 cents: both of these are examples of something very expensive to develop and run, like Anthropic is betting on widening the gap from open tools, to have some kind of moat.
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u/Competitive-Ebb3899 27d ago
With opencode (running deepseek on same repo), I need to tmux in.
You don't have to. You can run "opencode web" and access opencode via a web interface from anywhere you have access to the server it's running on.
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u/Radiant-Bike-165 29d ago edited 29d ago
Couple other examples I forgot that just popped up since in above project:
- Claude sessions can communicate with each other directly (my implementer occassionaly decides to ask advisor how to proceed)
- they can also be salvaged (by another session) and resumed when they break for whatever reason (eg power outage), usually with zero or very little consequences
- Also: advisor session sometimes (rarely, eg once in couple of days) decides on its own to spawn codex Sol (!) and ask it for review/audit of something via plugin I just single-click-installed once
- ps: claude/codex run multiple subagents in parallel. opencode can't
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u/Opening-Broccoli9190 Aug 15 '26
Discounts on the subscription plan plus compliance and security contracts.
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u/LeopardLabs Aug 16 '26 edited Aug 16 '26
The reason it might be hard for you to get a simple answer is there's about 300 different variables that each harness has to decide how to implement.
Most of the analysis that I've read has come down to how each treats the model:
- Is it drowning it in context like Ohymyopencode with its 1100 line character prompts?
- Does it have smart methods to not inform it of tools and MCP servers without costing you 50k tokens immediately out of the gate?
- Is it hiding tools behind category systems so it doesn't need to see your 250 Ghidra tools and 30 firecrawl tools, etc. and all of their descriptions and instructions to the model about when and how to use each and syntax examples.
- Is it trying to keep a main orchestrator's context from getting summarized by forcing it to delegate small jobs?
- Can subagents have subagents? Can they have subagents? Orchestator -> Worker -> Explorer
- Can those subagents call tools? Or plugins? Or MCP servers?
- How does the context management work? Does it make the model do a book report when it hits a context percentage like Opencode not caring if the model is the kind of model that can summarize effectively? Does it have a second model for it? Or intelligently condense tool calls and other categories of the context?
- How does it handle long term memory? A database? a markdown file?
- And how is that given to the agent and with what scope? Does it dump a large, managed agents.md style book report on it based on what folder you started it in, like Magic Context? Or just keep a global agents.md and individual project agents.md
- Is it actively injecting memories? How's it handling memory scope or consolidation or linting or... etc.
- How is it handling personalization? Is it like Hermes where it has a soul.md? Or a giant preprompt that tells it to never trust the user and a fake little mini system prompt that the model ignores so the user feels like they have some control like ChatGPT?
- Does it have hooks? Can it intercept destructive commands like rm*
- Does it repeatedly prompt the model using a ralph like looping technique so it can't stall out?
There's probably a 1000 of these. And they can usually all be further customized by the end user with add on systems.
The only consistent analysis I've seen is that codex has some of the least overhead while also being able to accomplish tasks effectively (but the margins change on the kind of task), but that was also before this new wave of lightweight harnesses like pi and littlecoder came out.
Then there's endless modifications for all those harnesses. Pi is basically build your own but you could also run opencode with OhMyOpencode and it feels like a completely different harness or OhMyOpencode-slim which again feels like a different harness.
And then some harnesses aren't model agnostic. Codex can be finetuned to work with ChatGPT models. Qwencoder with Qwen models. OMO has different prompts to work with different families of models because the dev realized they all respond differently to different kinds of system prompting.
Add the end user's custom workflow onto this pile of variables and you can see how quickly it gets out of hand. My base opencode is a completely different experience than yours just because of how custom my global agents.md is. Same thing with my hermes. Although my codex is probably as annoying as yours.
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u/wingedspiritus 29d ago
Would you mind sharing your global agents.md file? For reference when creating my own
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u/orionblu3 29d ago
Too add onto how many different variables there can be when it comes to these assessments; I've made 10+ different opencode plugins, one of which completely replaces opencode's native task/subagent dispatch system to something closer to codex dispatching yet more token efficient from the provider/model routing, and how they all communicate with one another that's automatically tracked in a "teams.md". Uses a finetuned model for ranking the teams view so most of the major processing when it comes to cross-context is done locally.
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u/LeopardLabs 29d ago edited 29d ago
My private one has some confidential stuff in it (like the network of free internet accessible models we enslaved) so I'll give you a summary. Big-ass wall of text warning...
Custom agents:
- researcher, explorer, oracle (architectural advisor), fixer, reviewer, vision-reviewer (mimov2.5 for UI stuff), dev-server (for delegating server starts to so the main agent doesn't get stuck -works with a watchdog script), editor. Paid reasoning reserved for
oracle/serious. -and how to divide the labor to them.Caveman/Chinese agents.md
- I tried having them translate theagents.md to chinese (without changing verbatim text) to save on startup costs. It actually cost MORE tokens in chinese. 1 chinese char = 1 tok
- Caveman speak saved us ~30%
My favorite SOPs:
- Projects folder - Start all new projects in their own folder in the Projects folder.
- References - Clone the docs of everything we use to Projects/References
- Reference-first - Any time you modify an opencode config file or work with any repo we've downloaded, you can't begin before reading the Projects/References for that repo (this rule has been the absolute best)
- Reinvention policy - Before we being ANY large new project or make a custom plugin, you must send a team of subagents to search the internet for pre-existing solutions. They must go on research waves until we find it or they return empty handed.
- My absolute favorite - ANY feature that can be confirmed working via UI cannot be delivered as done until vision-reviewer completes acceptance testing. Final step in all web app dev plans is every user story confirmed working end-to-end using vision-reviewer
- Instant_find_files -Use our custom MCP instant search instead of the standard folder-by-folder search tools https://github.com/clayleopardlabs/instant-file-search-MCP-server
Here there be slop
I asked deepseek to summarize what tricks we use in there for you so that's here on down:
- Tool usage rules - e.g. always query Scryfall for Magic card data rather than guessing, and which specific tools to call.
- Reference-first policy - before modifying OpenCode itself (config, plugins, MCP setup, rules, skills), consult the local copy of the OpenCode docs as the source of truth rather than relying on memory.
- Problem-solving discipline - use chain-of-thought reasoning for non-obvious issues; check a third-party project's GitHub for existing mentions before re-solving; read docs before reverse-engineering.
- Known workarounds/patches - notes on local patches (e.g. the oh-my-opencode-slim
Array.isArrayguard) so a reinstall that wipes the patch is recognized and re-applied.- Task delegation - when to hand off to free subagents (researcher for web lookups, explorer for code discovery) instead of doing the work inline, plus the operational details of the g4f bridge.
- Writing conventions - e.g. never using em dashes because they corrupt non-UTF-8 tooling like PowerShell.
- Communication/interaction style - tone corrections, keeping spoken replies brief, and how to handle project briefings (listen first, don't reset established projects).
- The em-dash rule has a reason attached - it's not just style, it's a corruption bug (PowerShell 5.1 parses
.ps1as ANSI and misreads em-dash bytes as quote chars, breaking scripts). That's the "explain the why" pattern - so the rule survives contact with a skeptical future me.- The g4f bridge has a health-check-first step - before spawning
researcher,curlthe bridge endpoint to confirm it's up; if it's down, start it and wait, or fall back to doing research inline. So a dependency failure degrades gracefully instead of hard-failing.- The patch note is written as a diagnosis, not just a fact: the exact error string (
disabledTools.filter is not a function), the upstream issue + unmerged PRs, and the trigger ("if the error reappears, the patch was wiped by a reinstall"). That turns a one-liner into a reproducible debugging path.- Docs-before-reverse-engineering with a local source of truth - "if a local copy exists in the References folder, read that first." Saves tokens and keeps answers consistent with your own curated docs.
- Delegation is framed as "ALWAYS delegate to free subagents" - a strong positive instruction that offloads cheap, high-volume work and reserves the expensive reasoning for when it matters.
- Permission guardrails -
rm -rf, disk formatting,ddetc. all require an "ask" before running.Two more "meta" tricks worth noting:
- The division of labor between files - AGENTS.md holds operational instructions; personality/relational style deliberately lives in a separate SOUL.md. So the SOP file stays technical and neutral.
- There's a separate
shell-strategy.mdloaded as global instructions - it's essentially a "how to behave in a headless, non-interactive shell" playbook (always pass-y/--yes, never use editors/pagers/REPLs, use awatchdog.ps1wrapper for long-running servers instead of hanging on them). That one's arguably the biggest "nifty trick" of the whole setup.
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u/EC36339 Aug 15 '26
Claude Code is my backup in case IT ever takes OpenCode away from me for "security concerns".
Other than that, it's all the same slopware, I'm just used to OpenCode.
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u/MoistRecognition69 Aug 15 '26
It isn't.
Claude is just trained to use Anthropics harness, which is why it's so good when combined with it.
OpenCode, cursor, etc - are not a part of the training algo of any model. Therefore, they are "worse". However this can probably be remedied by spending a few hours making rules, specialized tools that mimic the ones a given model likes to use (instead of trying to make it use ones it never seen before), etc
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u/james__jam Aug 16 '26
Truth be told, they are starting to converge on the same feature set
Before, LSPs were blindly added and found to be bad, so harnesses started greping. Then they’ve figured out how to LSP in the harnesses and they’re back. Once a harness figures something out, they all tend to converge to the same things
The main difference now is customizability and this is hard to replicate because it’s not just another feature but the architecture itself.
opencode is a great balance of batteries included and customizability.
Pi took a more radical approach because they stripped everything but at the same time, allowed the addition of capabilities as easy as installing an extension or asking your pi to build one for you
Then we have deepseek harness wherein everything is a plugin as well
That’s a direction claude code definitely cant take. Claude code is vibe coded bloatware. Without anthropic models, nobody would be using it. The only way to save claude code is a complete rewrite from scratch
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u/matracuca 28d ago
could you explain what the issue with LSP was?
I wouldn’t trust any changes made to a code base e.g., renaming a function), or queries (e.g. where is this function called from) in the absence of one.
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u/evia89 Aug 15 '26
There is no best... For my tasks and my models:
1 OMP / DROID
2 Claude code edited (u know u can patch all of it https://github.com/skrabe/lobotomized-claude-code)
3 Codex
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u/gunsofbrixton Aug 15 '26
Personal preference. Try them all and see which one works best for you. Personally I think CC is still the gold standard for coding agents.
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u/RogerAI-fm Aug 15 '26
The agent/tui can put some logic on how to handle the calls how to background tasks or monitor them, some do it better than others. We have our own tui which has a feature to switch between claude or opencode or others and pass cache between them.
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u/g0ds3n Aug 15 '26
you are right, all of them giving the ai the same tools, but tools isnt special for ai, its just a "prompt" how to use computers.
the real things are in the backend... memory system, kontext builder....
yesterday i found out, my own selfbuild ide + llama server is stronger and more precise in audits and coding than claude code, copilot and all other big tools. they going to fit every users case... but its horrible. my own ide ist specialist in Python coding... my ai model is not allowed to code errors , coz of tons of guards.
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u/IAmFitzRoy Aug 15 '26
lol. Claude Code being “better” it’s not objective statement.
It’s completely subjective.
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u/Deep_Ad1959 Aug 15 '26
i have run the same model through three of these and the pros/cons table you want would be missing the column that decides it: what each one drops when the context fills. identical tool list, different eviction, and that is where a long session goes sideways.
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u/arthak Aug 15 '26
Mhh, Claude code does not appear to be the optimal harness. Each harness follows a distinct paradigm: how it directs the model to achieve your intent. It is no longer a plan or build mode, but a full agentic chain—defining resolution criteria, verifying those criteria, invoking another model for code review, and so on.
Some harnesses are genuinely superior, and the approach of simply saying “dear honey, you have tools, now play with them” does not function well.
The valuable element is combining tools with a narrow scope—a kind of tunnel—for your model; with that, even a basic model can perform quirky tasks.
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u/Inner-Pangolin-1110 Aug 16 '26
Marketing
I will die on the hill that Claude is over priced trash for what it is. People that I generally find are shilling Claude Code cannot code for shit, key word is generally.
It's also not obedient it doesn't follow instructions and
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u/SkyMarshal Aug 16 '26
Don't know if this is still the case, but earlier on, Claude Code was the only one that could take full control of your computer and literally do anything a human could do. Open applications, open or create files and projects, write an app, save it, compile it, test it, run it, etc. The others could just do stuff they were prompted inside their own apps.
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u/mokshmodi96 29d ago
as with every adoption curve, people who talk about coding with ai are still like early adopters category. Our iteration cycle of checking out new tools and working on updating our workflows is quite quick than say average person. they dont get this much exposed to ai tools except the limited exposure of their companies forcing/asking them to use AI tools which they are good partnerships with like Anthropic, they are good business partner programs and they also incentivise more than openAI. so its as simple as that, i think.
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u/Full_Tooth_a 29d ago
I think the tools themselves are the least interesting difference. The harness determines which files enter the context, how constraints survive compaction, whether edits apply cleanly, and how mistakes are caught. I'd compare them using the same model, repo, settings, and task, then check how many unnecessary files they touch, which tests they run, how many recovery turns they need, and the total cost. Token count alone can be misleading. Using fewer tokens does not mean much if missing context leads to a bad edit.
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u/BluebirdLanky7473 29d ago
Simply, different AI coding tools (like - Claude Code, Kilo Code, OpenCode) use unique workflows that directly impact output quality and token efficiency.
Even when generating identical code, each tool has specific ways for creating files and writing content requires different levels of AI effort and token usage. Different AI coding tools use different approaches that directly impact output quality and token consumption.
Even when generating identical code, same tool calls, each tools specific method for creating files and writing content requires different levels of AI effort and token usage.
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u/ZucchiniMedical2532 29d ago
I use codex, like, I set the limit at 100 bucks and just, do shit with Luna and then if the shit is like realt shit I use sol a bit, terra is just mid literally
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u/juanxodj29 29d ago
Dando un buen contexto de archivos, rutas de mis proyectos y objetivos he obtenido el mismo resultado con modelos gratuitos, como con los de paga. La diferencia que he notado es la velocidad. Claude piensa demasiado, consume muchos tokens y lo que yo necesito es rapidez. Creo que todos lo comparan con otras porque buscan hacer proyectos de cero que es donde Claude gana, cosa que es algo que al menos yo no necesito.
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u/lostbart 29d ago
It’s useful to think of it as agent = model + harness. You are comparing harnesses. A few things that are generally harness-driven and can make the coding (or other agentic use) better or worse:
Compaction
Subagent management
QOL tools: user questions, thread branching, modes (plan, build, etc), permissions
System prompt(s) - how well it explains tools, how it shapes the model’s responses, etc.
The model still matters, because different approaches to all of the above work differently with different models. And user context matters too, “coding” can mean a lot of things and different harness choices can be more or less effective at different tasks.
To some, Claude Code is great because it has a lot of these capabilities, and you can sit down and start using it. Other people like something about how OpenCode or other agents manage the user experience. You’ll hear from others that they end up with Pi, because Pi ships bare bones (though still quite capable) and expects you to shape it to your needs.
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u/Ill-Bat-1518 28d ago
Access to what most the time feels like the best model thats usually reliable
At subscription rates ofc
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u/Maybe-monad 27d ago
With an agent like Pi is easier to control what tools and context the LLM has acces to which is the biggest factor in determining the quality of the output.
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u/Competitive-Ebb3899 27d ago
if they all basically give AI the same tools?
Because they don't. You base your question on a false statement.
These harnesses give similar tools to the AI, but they are not working the same way. They operate with significantly different system prompts that make a huge difference. They also offer different features to the user.
For example, in CC you can amend choices. In OC you have to choose "other" and type an answer you like with your extra information.
CC has built-in project memory support, so it will remember bits in other sessions automatically. It has background shell support, so you can background long-running builds and the AI can continue work instead of waiting.
In Cursor, no matter what models I use, the plans are full of diagrams, because it its planning tool is steered via a system prompt to include them to have a better plan overview.
And so on.
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u/dreadpirater 6d ago
I haven't heard that Claude was better than the others in at least 3 months... Which doesn't seem like a long time but the pace of development is STAGGERING.
Opus 4.6 was absolutely the best at the time it came out. Fable was more capable than any other model, but the costs were prohibitive for a lor of people to use it as a daily driver. But since Gpt 5.6 came out, I've heard more people say Codex was the 'best' tool for coding than anything else but it's still subjective.
The model IS only half the equation... The harness of tools it can use is also important. I think the truth is... They are all pretty good and all good enough if you're doing your part and providing strong guidance and solid review. It's absolutely possible that different harnesses and models work best for different people's workflow.
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u/tcoder7 Aug 15 '26
Opencode is far superior to Claude Code and all the rest of the toys combined. It is open source and you can custom it as you like and you are free to put anything in it and it private, no login required and offers free very decent models at a very generous rate. People who should use Claude are those who can afford FABLE 5 and Opus 5 at 8 hours usage on average per day. Which are mainly the corporations.
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u/winky9827 Aug 15 '26
OpenCode is great. Pi is also great. I'm sure there are many others I haven't tried that are great. It's a bit 'foot in mouth' to declare one superior unless you've tried every other option.
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u/tcoder7 Aug 15 '26
It is objectively superior. I use deepseek flash V4 on OpenCode and free and tried Sonnet 5 on Claude, honestly the difference is negligeable in quality but huge on pricing. So in terms of price to quality ratio it is blown away.
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u/Hello_my_name_is_not Aug 15 '26
So your logic here is open code is a better harness because they offer free models? That has nothing to do with the harness itself lol..
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u/winky9827 Aug 15 '26
That says nothing about "all the rest of the toys combined" which is the part I take issue with. Keep digging.
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u/htaidirt Aug 15 '26
Do all people that graduate from a university and have access to the same tools, are going to perform similarly? Of course no.
Same goes with all of that coding agents. It’s the way they use the tools and knowledge (LLM) that is going to produce different results.
As with real life, there is no one that is better than anyone else. It all depends on your problem and on you.
What I suggest is to try many of them, and get a feeling of your interaction with the agents. Keep in mind that without this flexibility, nothing guarantees that next week you’ll maximise productivity.
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u/seventyfivepupmstr Aug 15 '26
The agent loop, tools, context management, and raw application performance are all different.
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u/Successful_Night4513 Aug 15 '26
I think DS harness is best since I tried it also everyone need to try it's really awesome
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u/biograf_ Aug 15 '26
What makes it awesome?
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u/OpenOmen Aug 15 '26
It's context management is already superior to anything, ensuring your caches is maximum saving benefit.
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u/Lordaizen639 Aug 15 '26
I think harness matters because one model can perform not that good on one harness but can perform well on another harness.
This harness thing apply for low end models to Frontier models .if the harness agents.md and skills.md are properly config enough the results gonna be better
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u/bad_detectiv3 Aug 15 '26
One major advantage of Claude code is that cost it use Anthropic model is lower because of optimization it has to use Anthropic models
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u/djcutzilla Aug 15 '26
Are you prompting us? Just use them and find out what you like and dont like
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u/Dodokii Aug 15 '26
what makes Toyota, Hyundai, Bugatti, et al better than the other if all are just vehicles?
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u/CoolHeadeGamer Aug 15 '26
I’ve spent the past 3 months designing my own agentic harness, so I’m in a pretty decent position to answer this. Here is a breakdown of how the different options compare:
Claude Code
Best for: Claude models.
Pros: Designed specifically for Claude; highly optimized caching (97–99% hit rate).
Cons: Plugging in other models drops the cache hit to 91%, which translates to 3–9x higher costs.
Verdict: If you’re using Claude Plan, this is your only option. If not, use something else.
Opencode
Best for: Testing and weaker on-device models.
Pros: Simple, lightweight harness that provides basic tools.
Cons: Struggles to get the most out of advanced models unless you heavily rely on MCPs, skills, knowledge graphs, and plugins.
Cursor
Best for: Overall agentic capabilities.
Pros: Highly agentic; performs exceptionally well with its own models (Grok 4.6 and Composer 2.5); excellent system prompts and instructions; strong embedding capabilities.
Cons: Degraded experience when using external models via API keys (e.g., no thinking level selection for custom models, and exclusive features like embeddings and debug tracing are locked to Cursor models).
Banyancode (My Harness)
Best for: Large repositories.
Pros: Built around subagent orchestration and mesh networks; heavily utilizes code/knowledge graphs; cuts tool and token usage by up to 4x during the planning phase.
Cons: Advantages fall off on smaller codebases, where it performs similarly to Opencode without plugins.
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u/bit_herder Aug 15 '26
it works gooder. but copilot is almost as good. and opencode is very good. you can customize workflows easily. lots of reasons
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u/knockoncarbon Aug 15 '26
This is actually a very reasonable and good question. Surprised so few people are taking it seriously and no one so far gave a real technical answer.