Agent Zero vs Muse Code

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.

Muse Code

Muse Code runs with approvals and an OS sandbox on by default, per-host network approval, an append-only event log and a headless mode with documented exit codes. It is the only route to Muse Wonder Full. It is closed source with undated release notes and no free route, and subscriptions allow training on code unless Contributor mode is turned off.

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

Muse Code

1. Set META_API_KEY for headless runs. Browser sign-in isn't available in CI or for Meta Managed Accounts
2. Gate on your own test command, not the exit code. muse exec returns 0 when the turn completes even if tests still fail
3. Pass --max-model-steps on unattended runs so a stuck task can't loop
4. Prefer --disable-approval to --yolo in CI so the sandbox stays on. On Linux the runner needs a working bubblewrap and a non-musl build
5. Turn Contributor mode off in /settings before a subscription session touches private code