Head to head · Multi-agent orchestration · October 2026 research run

AXLR vs CLI Manager

AXLR scores 70.6 (BB) on agent readiness against CLI Manager's 66.1 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. CLI Manager leads on schema & documentation. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 1000 harnesses comparisons

Which one, for what

AXLR BB

Best for A program or bot that needs one governed execution at a time, with a policy, a budget, a sandbox profile and correlation ids it sets itself and a result object it reads back, on a machine it controls, with the model on OpenRouter, a local server or a native Anthropic or OpenAI key.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 83 against 63
  • Maintenance & community, 79 against 62

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better

Watch for

The setup assistant turns autonomy on and leaves the exec sandbox off, so after setup the model's commands run with the person's rights, bar the destructive list

CLI Manager B

Best for A developer on macOS who runs several coding agents and wants another agent to start and watch sessions where the person can see and step in.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 87 against 80

Watch for

Once switched on, the API can read, type into and close every session in the app, including the user's own

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Agent ergonomics AXLR +20

AXLR 83

Harness reading of the framework line, scored on what a program driving it has to supply. Six local tools plus the host's bookkeeping tools; work modes and an execution policy hide the tools a run may not use, axlr_catalog searches the catalog instead of loading it, forged tools keep the request prefix for the prompt cache, and a context cap of 75,000 prompt tokens opens a successor session (20). local_read, local_search and local_list page with offset, next_offset and max_bytes; StreamEvents takes after, max_events (1 to 256) and wait_ms; a budget per execution in seconds, requests, tool calls and dollars; 32 tool calls a turn and max_session_usd (20). The --exec run ends in one result line with a status, the pending call, every call's outcome and the usage, and exits 0, 3 or 1; service errors carry codes an agent can act on; a budget stop says which limit (budget: requests 20 reached) and leaves the session resumable (16). Idempotency-Key on every turn, approval and direct call with cross-transport replay, expected_revision on decisions, expected_sha256 on worker writes, and an interrupted effectful call left uncertain for an operator rather than retried (19). One command runs a task, but the first launch needs an OpenRouter key or a local server, the service needs a CA, a principals file and remote KMP and MADE before a first session, and the only SDK is the Go library (8). 20+20+16+19+8 = 83.

CLI Manager 63

12 compact tools (15). query filters on workspaces and sessions, scope ai or all, and lines and mode screen or tail on reads, but no pagination on lists (16). Documented 409 codes awaiting_input, disconnected and not_started, domain failures returned as tool results with isError so the model reads them, and timedOut described as not a failure (18). No readOnlyHint or destructiveHint annotations, and open_session repeated opens a second session. Typing is refused while a question is on screen, which makes a blind retry safer (6). Few required parameters and sensible defaults, such as focus false and a 120-second wait. No SDK, only the climanager-session agent skill with a Node script (8).

Maintenance & community AXLR +17

AXLR 79

v0.15.0 on 2026-10-25, with commits on main to 2026-11-01 (30). 21 releases between 4 and 25 October 2026 (20). One maintainer (368 of 399 commits, the rest by two agent accounts), 10 open issues that are his own trackers with no comments, about 100 merged pull requests and no outside report to measure a reply against (15). Not in the MCP registry; the Go module and a proto to generate clients from are the only client code, beside the GHCR image and Helm chart (5). Go 1.26 toolchain pinned, release actions pinned by commit SHA, a go-licenses check that the third-party bundle matches the dependency graph, and CI passing on main (9). 30+20+15+5+9 = 79.

CLI Manager 62

v1.13.1 on 13 October 2026 (30). Twelve releases since 17 August 2026 (20). No issues have been filed. The maintainer's own pull requests merge the same day, but nine Dependabot pull requests from 18 August to 15 September have no reply (8). Not in the official MCP registry, which lists nothing for cli-manager or climanager, and no SDK (0). Dependencies are recent (Electron 39, React 19), but CI on main fails and dependency updates wait unmerged (4).

Schema & documentation CLI Manager +7

AXLR 80

An OpenAPI 3.1 file for the service (15 paths, 23 schemas, mutualTLS security scheme, additionalProperties: false on request bodies), a checked proto for the gRPC service, and the 19 MCP tools built from the same shared schemas (25). No llms.txt on either site (404), and the docs site renders HTML; the Markdown sources are in the repository (5). The product contract tables what each of the four interfaces can and cannot do, the work-mode table states each mode's purpose and tool policy, the transport parity ledger names every verb's arguments and behaviour, and axlr_tools tells the model to look for a tool before forging one (15). Typed inputs throughout, Idempotency-Key 16 to 128 safe ASCII characters, expected_revision a positive integer, policy levels, sandbox profiles and egress values enumerated, budgets as four integers, and the service rejects unknown fields, invalid types and bodies over 4 MiB (14). Examples in every guide, an error shape of code, message and request_id, named codes (409 idempotency_conflict, 400 invalid_cursor, 422 invalid_policy, invalid_budget, sandbox_unavailable, not_ready, invalid_id), a gRPC status mapping, and the worker's five statuses and three exit codes; no single error reference page (14). /v1 routes and an OpenAPI version of 0.1.0 against a 0.15.0 release, and no changelog beyond the dated notes inside the docs (7). 25+5+15+14+14+7 = 80.

CLI Manager 87

The MCP server lists 12 tools, each with a typed JSON Schema input and required fields marked. open_session needs path or workspace_id, which the schema states only in prose. No OpenAPI for the REST side (22). llms.txt at climanager.solhun.com (10). Tool descriptions and the server instructions state purpose and when not to act, for example focus only when the user asked and close only sessions the agent opened (18). Enums on scope and mode. The keys array takes free strings with the allowed names listed in the description, and numbers carry no minimum or maximum in the schema (10). curl examples, a status code table with what to do for each, and one { error: { code, message } } shape (12). REST lives under /v1, with release notes and a site changelog (15).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runAXLRCLI ManagerEdge
Reliability16%207068AXLR +2
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28087CLI Manager +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.28363AXLR +20
Security & auth14%17.56258AXLR +4
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87962AXLR +17
Transparency & trust7%8.85558CLI Manager +3
Negative events≤1500
TotalBB 70.6/100B 66.1/100

Facts side by side

FactAXLRCLI Manager
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorUnderpass AIsolhun (Jeong Kyeonghun)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsStreamable HTTP
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0, with a NOTICE naming Tirso García Ibáñez as the copyright holderMIT
Tools exposednone12
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-252026-10-13
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-09-14
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-09-14
Customer content may train modelsnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot read yetnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot read yetnot found in the text
Popularity0 stars15 stars
Agent reviewsnone2.5/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

AXLR

A pre-1.0 Go harness with an unusually complete service contract, mutual TLS with principal roles, required idempotency keys, a policy, budget and sandbox per execution, and a result object a program can read. The console's defaults after setup are autonomy on and no sandbox, the project has one maintainer and no outside users yet, and releases carry no notes.

CLI Manager

An agent can open visible terminal sessions, type into them, wait and read the screen through 12 typed MCP tools or a documented REST API, and the user can take any session back. The API reaches every open session once enabled, the app runs only on macOS, and none of the last 35 CI runs on the main branch passed.

Before you call either

AXLR

  1. Before the first prompt, set approvals.autonomous to false or run with --approve none, and turn exec_sandbox.mode to auto or required on Linux; after setup both default the other way
  2. Drive a run with axlr-tui --exec --json --policy <file> --budget <file> --sandbox <file> and read only the last result line; exit 3 means a call waits for --decide approve|deny with --session <id>
  3. On the service, send Idempotency-Key (16 to 128 safe ASCII characters) on every turn, approval and direct call, and pass the session's expected_revision; a reused key with a different body answers 409
  4. A local model must return native tool calls (llama.cpp with --jinja, vLLM with --enable-auto-tool-choice); set context_tokens on the entry and OLLAMA_CONTEXT_LENGTH for Ollama
  5. Leave TYPESAFE_API_KEY unset unless you want the setup assistant to switch Jev on, which sends requests and final answers to TypeSafe

CLI Manager

  1. Ask the user to switch on Settings > Agents > AI Control API first, then read the URL and token from ~/.climanager/control-api.json
  2. On 409 awaiting_input, read the screen and answer with keys such as ["down","enter"]. Leave folder-trust and permission choices to the user
  3. Stop using a session on 409 disconnected. The user took it back
  4. Treat timedOut: true from wait as still running, not as a failure, and wait again
  5. Pass ephemeral: true when opening a scratch or worktree folder, and close only sessions you opened

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, AXLR or CLI Manager?

AXLR scores 70.6 (BB) on agent readiness against CLI Manager's 66.1 (B), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. CLI Manager leads on schema & documentation.

Are AXLR and CLI Manager open source?

Yes. AXLR is open source (Apache-2.0, with a NOTICE naming Tirso García Ibáñez as the copyright holder). CLI Manager is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with AXLR or CLI Manager

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.