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
| Category | Weight this run | Big Arrow | Hatchet | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 75 | 66 | Big Arrow +9 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 78 | 85 | Hatchet +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 77 | 82 | Hatchet +5 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 67 | 62 | Big Arrow +5 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 40 | Big Arrow +20 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 70 | 90 | Hatchet +20 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 59 | 71 | Hatchet +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -2 | |
| Total | BB 70.7/100 | B 68.3/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Big Arrow | Hatchet |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | SDK + MCP | Platform |
| Vendor | Franz Enzenhofer | Hatchet Technologies, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | https://cloud.hatchet.run |
| Transports | HTTP, stdio | |
| Auth | None | API key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | MIT |
| Tools exposed | none | 7 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-12 | 2026-10-08 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2025-07-17 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-08-18 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | |
| Popularity | 747 stars | none |
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
- Open the exact System Settings pane or URL first, then point at the one control left for the person
- Write the sign as a full sentence that names the action and, for approvals or payments, what the click does
- Pass
--appor--windowfor any target inside an app, so it is raised and the arrow hides while covered - On exit 4, run
bigarrow doctorand ask the person to grant Accessibility to the app running your shell, not to bigarrow - Call
bigarrow stoponce the step is done, and addbigarrow stop --hookas a Claude Code UserPromptSubmit hook
Hatchet
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Filter with a CEL expression such as
input.user_id == '1234'so one approval key cannot resume another request's task - Push the answer with the SDK's event push or
POST /api/v1/tenants/{tenant}/events. The MCP server has no tool for it - 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
- gotoHuman vs Hatchet
- Hatchet vs Inngest
- Hatchet vs Orkes Conductor Human tasks
- Hatchet vs Permit MCP Gateway
- Hatchet vs Pushary
- Hatchet vs Restate
- Hatchet vs Temporal
- Hatchet vs Trigger.dev
- Hatchet vs withHuman
- Big Arrow vs gotoHuman
- Big Arrow vs Inngest
- Big Arrow vs Pushary
- Big Arrow vs Restate
- Big Arrow vs Temporal
- Big Arrow vs Trigger.dev
- Big Arrow vs Orkes Conductor Human tasks
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/bigarrow-vs-hatchet.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/bigarrow.json·/api/v1/tools/hatchet.json - From a terminal
anchor compare bigarrow hatchet(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "bigarrow", "b": "hatchet"}at/mcp, no key