Agent Zero vs Droid CLI

Agent Zero

Self-hosted under the MIT licence, with nine releases in the 90 days to 12 October 2026 and breaking changes listed in the release notes. The agent runs shell commands in its container with no approval step, the web interface has no login by default, and five CVEs from the past year have no published GitHub advisory.

Droid CLI

droid exec is read-only unless --auto raises the autonomy level, with command rules, an optional kernel-enforced sandbox, JSON output and documented exit codes. No free tier, status page or security.txt was found, the source is closed, and usage metrics go to Factory by default.

Agent Zero

1. Set a UI login and password in Settings before publishing the port or opening a tunnel. The default has none
2. Fill allowed_users, allowed_numbers or sender_whitelist before enabling a channel. An empty list accepts every sender
3. Enable the Infection Check plugin when the agent reads mail, web pages or MCP results. It ships disabled
4. Run v2.12 or later. It fixes a Telegram webhook authentication bypass and a WhatsApp media path traversal
5. Call POST /api_message with the X-API-KEY header. The token changes when the UI login or password changes

Droid CLI

1. Set FACTORY_API_KEY (starts fk-) from the API keys page in Factory settings for headless runs. Interactive use signs in through a browser
2. Start with droid exec and no flags for analysis. Add --auto low for edits and --auto medium for installs, tests and local commits
3. Use --output-format json and read is_error, num_turns and session_id. Treat a non-zero exit code as failure
4. Set sandbox.enabled to true before running on untrusted code. In droid exec a sandbox violation is denied without a prompt
5. Pin the version in CI with npm install -g droid@<version>, or set FACTORY_DROID_AUTO_UPDATE_ENABLED=false on standalone installs, which update themselves