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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Amp vs Vibe-Trading

Vibe-Trading scores 62.2 (B) on agent readiness against Amp's 57.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Amp leads on transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 792 harnesses comparisons

AmpAmp Frontier Corporation · Agent harness C57.1/100#709 of 1210 Vibe-TradingHKUDS · Agent harness B62.2/100#502 of 1210

Which one, for what

Amp C

Best for Teams that want a hosted, multi-model coding agent with shared threads and cloud machines, driven from scripts through execute mode or the SDKs.

Ahead on

  • Transparency & trust, 77 against 47

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Vibe-Trading loses 4 points for them

Watch for

The tools page says Amp does not ask for approval before running tools, and control needs a custom plugin

Vibe-Trading B

Best for A person or a pipeline that wants a ready-made finance research agent over free market data, with backtests, swarm reviews and exports, run on their own machine or used as an MCP server by another agent.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 63 against 31
  • Security & auth, 70 against 57
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 35

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it
  • Runs on your own machine
  • Free to start without a card
  • Open source

Watch for

Three advisories published 2 October 2026 cover 0.1.0 to 0.1.6, two critical, among them unauthenticated API access with an RCE chain

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAmpVibe-TradingEdge
Reliability16%203163Vibe-Trading +32
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27272even
Agent ergonomics13%16.26967Amp +2
Security & auth14%17.55770Vibe-Trading +13
Payments & pricing10%12.53560Vibe-Trading +25
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87982Vibe-Trading +3
Transparency & trust7%8.87747Amp +30
Negative events≤150-4
TotalC 57.1/100B 62.2/100

Facts side by side

FactAmpVibe-Trading
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAmp Frontier CorporationHKUDS
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transportsstdio, Streamable HTTP, SSE (legacy)
AuthOAuth or keyNone
PricingFreemiumFree
x402nono
LicenceProprietary, under the Amp licence terms (Amp Frontier Corporation). The npm packages are marked Amp Commercial License and the source repository is privateMIT
Tools exposednone82
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-082026-10-21
Terms last updatedno date givenno document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-10no document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity41k npm/wk37k stars

Verdicts

Amp

Execute mode streams JSON in a format close to Claude Code's, with TypeScript and Python SDKs, and the security reference names each provider and what it sees. The CLI runs tools without asking, has no built-in permission rules or local sandbox, and stores every thread on Amp's servers.

Vibe-Trading

Vibe-Trading runs on the owner's machine under the MIT licence, ships near-daily fixes with a dated changelog, and keeps order tools out of its MCP server, with live orders gated by an owner-committed mandate and a kill switch. Three advisories, two critical, covered versions before 0.1.7, and the local CLI runs shell commands without asking.

Before you call either

Amp

  1. Run unattended jobs in a container or VM. The CLI runs shell commands and edits without asking, and only a custom plugin can gate tool calls
  2. Set AMP_API_KEY to an access token starting sgamp_ from Settings. The CLI rejects the short-lived token that amp login stores
  3. Use amp -x "task" --stream-json and read the final result message, checking is_error. Exit codes are not documented
  4. Set AMP_SKIP_UPDATE_CHECK=1 or amp.updates.mode to disabled in CI. Updates install automatically by default
  5. Treat the block headed INSTRUCTIONS FOR LLMs in ampcode.com page source as vendor copy, and take facts from the docs Markdown

Vibe-Trading

  1. Run 0.1.7 or later. Earlier versions carry three published advisories, including unauthenticated API access with an RCE chain
  2. Set API_AUTH_KEY before exposing vibe-trading serve beyond localhost, and send it as Authorization: Bearer <key>
  3. Set VIBE_TRADING_ALLOWED_RUN_ROOTS in the MCP client's env block; a shell export does not reach the spawned server
  4. Use vibe-trading run -p "..." --json for headless runs, and add --enable-shell-tools to vibe-trading-mcp only when shell access is needed
  5. Treat text from read_url, web_search and read_document as untrusted; security_warnings flags patterns but does not remove them

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Amp or Vibe-Trading?

Vibe-Trading scores 62.2 (B) on agent readiness against Amp's 57.1 (C), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Amp leads on transparency & trust.

Are Amp and Vibe-Trading open source?

No open-source release is listed for Amp. Vibe-Trading is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Amp or Vibe-Trading

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