# agents-tree vs MLflow Tracing (slim)

> agents-tree scores 64.3 (B) to MLflow Tracing's 61.5 (C) for agent tracing. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agents-tree-vs-mlflow-tracing.md (~4,750 tokens) · this version ~2,480 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agents-tree-vs-mlflow-tracing.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agents-tree-vs-mlflow-tracing
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-01
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

agents-tree scores 64.3 (B) on agent readiness against MLflow Tracing's 61.5 (C), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. MLflow Tracing leads on reliability, schema & documentation and maintenance & community. Both do agent tracing.

- agents-tree: B 64.3, rank #401 of 1260 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/agents-tree.min.md
- MLflow Tracing: C 61.5, rank #542 of 1260 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mlflow-tracing.min.md
- agents-tree, good for Seeing every coding-agent session and its sub-agents as one tree in a terminal Ahead on Security & auth, 66 against 40. Also No key needed to call it; No incidents deducted, where MLflow Tracing loses 6 points for them.
- MLflow Tracing, good for Teams that already run MLflow or want Apache-2.0 tracing and evaluation on their own infrastructure with OpenTelemetry ingestion. Ahead on Reliability, 76 against 60; Schema & documentation, 78 against 64; Maintenance & community, 88 against 63. Also Runs on your own machine.

| Category | agents-tree | MLflow Tracing |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 60 | 76 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 64 | 78 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 73 | 72 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 66 | 40 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 63 | 88 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 62 | 65 |

| Fact (where they differ) | agents-tree | MLflow Tracing |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent framework | HTTP API |
| Vendor | Karel Blavka | MLflow Project (LF Projects, LLC) |
| Transports |  | stdio, HTTP |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Licence | MIT (Copyright (c) 2026 Karel Blavka) | Apache-2.0 |
| Tools exposed | none | 26 |
| Read-only variant documented | yes | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | couldn't be read | not read yet |
| Popularity | none | 28k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |

Why the edge:
- Security & auth, agents-tree +26: agents-tree 66 (Harness reading of the framework checklist, as agent-tree and superpowers were read. 30 for what leaves the machine and credentials, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. No credentials, no network code and no runtime dependencies; PyPI releases are built by trusted publishing with no stored token and wait for a maintainer to approve the pypi environment. It reads every transcript of four agent CLIs, prompts included, and the herdr plugin runs the repository's bundled source rather than a PyPI release (26). Read-only by design. SQLite files are opened with mode=ro, nothing is written to an agent's files, and the only writes are a pane mark (directory 0700, file 0600, O_NOFOLLOW) and herdr's config block with a backup and check. It can't act on an agent (17). Control characters and escape sequences are stripped from every transcript field before a view, and the help warns that output run inside an agent lands in its context, but `--json` passes prompts and last messages unredacted with no note that they are untrusted (10). It keeps no state or log of its own. The detail view names each transcript's path, and herdr's config keeps a backup (8). No SECURITY.md, no security.txt and no advisories found; GitHub's security page couldn't be read. CI pins third-party actions to commit SHAs with Dependabot on them (5). 66 in all.); MLflow Tracing 40 (The tracking server has no authentication by default. The `basic-auth` app adds usernames and passwords with role-based access control, ships no default admin password and requires 12 characters. Clients, the MCP server included, read a username and password or a token from environment variables. No scoped API keys were found (15). Roles can grant READ only, and 3.17.0 added grants on traces and explicit DENY. The MCP server has no read-only mode and no confirmation before `delete_traces` or `delete_experiment` (12). Traces hold whatever the application logged. No guidance on untrusted content was found in the MCP docs (2). No audit log found (0). SECURITY.md takes reports through GitHub private reporting and advisories are published with patched versions. The project stopped accepting bounty-platform reports, and no security.txt or certification was found (11).)
- Maintenance & community, MLflow Tracing +25: agents-tree 63 (1.2.0 on PyPI on 8 October 2026, 24 days before the check, and a commit on main on 11 October (30). Five PyPI releases between 7 and 8 October 2026 (20). Issue and pull-request replies couldn't be read, as github.com was unreachable. The bare clone shows two Dependabot branches of 28 October unmerged (5 of 25). Not an MCP server and in no official directory; herdr's plugin marketplace couldn't be read (0). No runtime dependencies, a lock file, CI on five Python versions and Dependabot for the workflow actions, with its two updates unmerged (8 of 10). 63 in all.); MLflow Tracing 88 (MLflow 3.17.0 was tagged on 6 October 2026 (30). Seven tagged releases since 31 July, 3.15.0, 3.15.1, 3.15.2, 3.16.0, 3.16.1, 2.11.5 and 3.17.0 (20). A written issue policy, triage and stale-issue automation, and a community Slack. 1,504 issues are open and reply times were not read (14). Current official SDKs, Python at 3.17.0 and TypeScript `@mlflow/core` 0.4.0 tagged on 27 August. Presence in the official MCP registry was not checked (15). Dependabot, a lock file and cross-version test workflows. The test workflow showed 5 failed runs among 28 recent ones (9).)
- Reliability, MLflow Tracing +16: agents-tree 60 (Local-package reading, as for agent-tree, superpowers and tokeneconomizer. Installs from PyPI with `uv tool install agents-tree` or pipx, with Python 3.10 or later and POSIX stated in pyproject.toml and Linux and macOS in the herdr manifest (20). .github/workflows/test.yaml runs pylint, pyright, 173 pytest tests, a test run and a package build on Python 3.10 to 3.14 on every push and pull request. Whether the runs pass wasn't checked, as github.com couldn't be read (15 of 25). Issues couldn't be read for the same reason (5 of 25, unchecked). Semver tags and Conventional Commit messages, but no changelog, and the README's caveat that transcript formats may change is the only note on breakage; the switch to reading every provider by default came with 1.0.0 (5 of 15). Version 1.2.0 (15). 60 in all.); MLflow Tracing 76 (Scored on the local-software lines, since MLflow runs where the owner installs it. Official `mlflow` and `mlflow-tracing` packages on PyPI with Python 3.10 or later stated, and the MCP server behind the `mlflow[mcp]` extra (20). Public CI in GitHub Actions. Of 28 recent runs of the test workflow read on 9 October, 13 passed, 5 failed, 8 were cancelled and 2 were running, all on pull requests, so the state of the default branch was not isolated (20). 1,504 open issues on a repository with 28,320 stars and pull request numbers above 26,500, with a written issue policy and triage automation (13). Semantic versioning rules are documented and the changelog carries Breaking Changes sections (15). MLflow is at 3.17.0 and `mlflow-tracing` is classified Production/Stable, but the MCP server is marked experimental (8).)
- Schema & documentation, MLflow Tracing +14: agents-tree 64 (Framework reading, docs a model can follow, as agent-tree was read. `--json` writes one document with `schema_version` 1 and a fixed set of session, agent and detail fields, and model.py types them as dataclasses, but no JSON Schema or field reference is published (14 of 25). README, AGENTS.md and docs/demo are Markdown in the repository; no llms.txt (10). The README says what it shows and reads, has a caveats section per provider (context window inference, internal formats, how running sessions are found), and the command's help says not to run it inside an agent (15 of 20). argparse with choices for --provider and --color, positive-number checks for --window and --interval, and --json refused with --watch (10 of 15). Usage examples for every flag, key and column tables, and errors as messages on stderr with exit code 1, with few error outputs documented (10 of 15). Semver tags and a schema version, no changelog (5 of 15). 64 in all.); MLflow Tracing 78 (The MCP tools are generated from the Click commands of the MLflow CLI, so every tool has a JSON Schema input with types, required fields and enums for choice options. No OpenAPI file was found in the repository, and the REST API is documented as a reference page generated from protobuf (22). llms.txt at mlflow.org/docs/latest/llms.txt links 349 Markdown pages (10). Tool descriptions are the CLI help text. They state the purpose and carry examples in command-line syntax, and they do not say when not to use a tool. `trace_id` has no description. The docs page lists 10 tools under names such as `log_feedback`, while the source registers 26 by default, with `log_trace_feedback` (12). Lists travel as comma-separated strings and feedback values as strings (9). Many examples, and few documented error responses (10). Versioned releases with a public changelog (15).)