Head to head · Hitl ask · October 2026 research run

Big Arrow vs Hatchet

Big Arrow scores 70.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Hatchet's 68.3 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Hatchet leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do hitl ask.

Best human approval and handoff for AI agents · All 53 human approval comparisons

Which one, for what

Big Arrow BB

Best for An agent on a person's Mac that reaches a step only the person may do, such as a permission prompt, 2FA code or payment, and needs to show where.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 75 against 66
  • Security & auth, 67 against 62
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 40

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • No key needed to call it
  • Free to start without a card

Watch for

First commit 8 October 2026 and version 0.4.6, with flags removed or renamed between minor versions

Hatchet B

Best for It suits a team already running background jobs or agent loops on Hatchet that wants an approval pause inside the same durable task, in Python, TypeScript, Go or Ruby.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 85 against 78
  • Agent ergonomics, 82 against 77
  • Maintenance & community, 90 against 70
  • Transparency & trust, 71 against 59

Also in its favour

  • A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
  • Runs on your own machine

Watch for

No approver inbox, Slack or email channel, routing or reminder. The owner builds the request and the way the answer is pushed

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runBig ArrowHatchetEdge
Reliability16%207566Big Arrow +9
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.27885Hatchet +7
Agent ergonomics13%16.27782Hatchet +5
Security & auth14%17.56762Big Arrow +5
Payments & pricing10%12.56040Big Arrow +20
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87090Hatchet +20
Transparency & trust7%8.85971Hatchet +12
Negative events≤150-2
TotalBB 70.7/100B 68.3/100

Facts side by side

FactBig ArrowHatchet
KindSDK + MCPPlatform
VendorFranz EnzenhoferHatchet Technologies, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)https://cloud.hatchet.run
TransportsHTTP, stdio
AuthNoneAPI key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT
Tools exposednone7
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-122026-10-08
Terms last updatedno document linked2025-07-17
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-08-18
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 noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity747 starsnone

Verdicts

Big Arrow

An agent can show a person which control to click, with a labelled arrow that needs no permission to draw, never takes focus and always removes itself. The tool is a week old at version 0.4.6, runs only on macOS, reports no answer beyond how an arrow ended, and has no security policy.

Hatchet

A durable task waits for a keyed event without holding a worker slot, and resumes from its event log after a restart, in Python, TypeScript, Go or Ruby. Hatchet supplies only the pause and resume. It has no approver inbox, notification channel or record of who answered, and its MCP server cannot push the event.

Before you call either

Big Arrow

  1. Open the exact System Settings pane or URL first, then point at the one control left for the person
  2. Write the sign as a full sentence that names the action and, for approvals or payments, what the click does
  3. Pass --app or --window for any target inside an app, so it is raised and the arrow hides while covered
  4. On exit 4, run bigarrow doctor and ask the person to grant Accessibility to the app running your shell, not to bigarrow
  5. Call bigarrow stop once the step is done, and add bigarrow stop --hook as a Claude Code UserPromptSubmit hook

Hatchet

  1. Put the approval wait in a durable task, and keep API calls, database reads and random values in child tasks, because the code between checkpoints is replayed
  2. Add a sleep condition in the same or group as the event condition to set a deadline, and treat the sleep firing first as a timeout
  3. Give the event a scope and the wait a lookback window when the answer can arrive before the wait starts. Both must be set together
  4. Filter with a CEL expression such as input.user_id == '1234' so one approval key cannot resume another request's task
  5. Push the answer with the SDK's event push or POST /api/v1/tenants/{tenant}/events. The MCP server has no tool for it
  6. Grant the MCP server one profile with hatchet mcp auth --grant <profile>. It refuses profiles that were not granted

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Big Arrow or Hatchet?

Big Arrow scores 70.7 (BB) on agent readiness against Hatchet's 68.3 (B), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Hatchet leads on schema & documentation, agent ergonomics, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

Are Big Arrow and Hatchet open source?

Yes. Big Arrow is open source (MIT). Hatchet is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Big Arrow or Hatchet

Machine-readable

For companies

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