Head to head · Multi-agent orchestration · October 2026 research run
Clawboo vs Emdash
Clawboo scores 61.4 (C) on agent readiness against Emdash's 53.9 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Emdash leads on maintenance & community. Both do multi-agent orchestration.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 1500 harnesses comparisons
Which one, for what
Clawboo C
Best for One person on one computer who wants several coding and general agents on one board, with shared memory and a lead agent that routes work.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 83 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 75 against 55
- Security & auth, 70 against 38
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
Claude Code runs in bypassPermissions, Codex with danger-full-access and Hermes with --yolo, with no setting to change it and no sandbox
Emdash D
Best for Developers who want parallel agents in worktrees, fed from their issue tracker, locally or over SSH.
Ahead on
- Maintenance & community, 70 against 51
Also in its favour
- No incidents deducted, where Clawboo loses 4 points for them
Watch for
Telemetry on unless turned off in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false
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.
Security & auth Clawboo +32
Clawboo 70
Harness reading of the framework checklist, as for the other harnesses. 30 for what leaves the machine by default, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. The docs say Clawboo sends no telemetry and list the GitHub catalogue fetch, the npm version check, OpenRouter's public model list, Google Fonts and the GitHub star count, of which only the catalogue address can be changed (27). Clawboo Native shell commands are off by default and asked one at a time, and connector grants are per agent with approval on writes. Claude Code, Codex and Hermes run with their prompts and sandboxes off and no setting to change it, they can read Clawboo's database and key vault, and with no access token by default any local program can answer approval cards (8). Images in agent text don't load on their own, peer posts are marked as evidence, and a run that has read private data and untrusted content asks before any outbound connector call (11). An audit log of budget, breaker, approval, verification, tool-call and install events, with secrets masked (13). SECURITY.md with private reporting, CodeQL, Dependabot and npm provenance. No security.txt or bug bounty, OSV lists no advisory for clawboo, and the proxy advisory is on the docs with a workaround while its fix is unreleased (11).
Emdash 38
Harness reading. Telemetry is described as optional and disabled in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false, which reads as on by default (15 of 30). Worktree per task and remote machines over SSH (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). No security policy file found (3). 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 38.
Schema & documentation Clawboo +28
Clawboo 83
Harness reading of the framework line, as for Paperclip. The REST API's 199 routes are documented per resource with parameters, bodies and responses, and the MCP tools reference gives typed arguments for every tool on the four servers, but no OpenAPI file was found (17). llms.txt, llms-full.txt and a Markdown copy of every page at .md on docs.claw.boo (10). The docs say what each part does and does not cover, with known issues, production defaults and a limits page that names the code line behind each number (17). Tool arguments are typed with required and optional fields and documented caps, such as 24 live subtasks per parent and limits lowered to 1,000, with free-text task bodies (12). curl examples on each API page, an events and errors reference, and the exact error strings each MCP tool returns (14). A dated changelog for every release with an Unreleased section, though API paths carry no version and every MCP server reports 0.1.0 (13).
Emdash 55
Harness reading. Docs site and a workspace server package (55).
Agent ergonomics Clawboo +20
Clawboo 75
Harness reading, scored on what an agent or pipeline driving it has to supply. Four MCP servers keep tool lists small (12 Tasks tools, 4 Memory tools, 2 or 3 TeamChat tools, and Tools with four demonstration builtins plus granted connectors), Clawboo Native gets a read-only Tasks subset, and Tools results over 16 KiB are trimmed with a handle to read the rest (22). Circuit breakers stop task-runner runs after more than 30 tool calls or 200,000 tokens a minute, and team chat caps hand-offs at 8 a turn and three levels. Budgets warn only unless set to a hard cap, and a hard cap stops most runs only between runs (14). REST errors use one {error} shape, refused MCP calls return denied: with a reason prefix, and 429s carry Retry-After (16). claim_task and assign_task are atomic, illegal status changes are refused by name, the board survives restarts and routines resume after failure. No MCP tool annotations are documented (14). One npx command and a provider key or a local Ollama, but Claude Code teammates need a global install with the Agent SDK, and there is no client SDK (9).
Emdash 55
Harness reading. Issue intake from Linear, GitHub, Jira and others, diff review, pull requests and CI checks in one place, local or over SSH (55).
Maintenance & community Emdash +19
Clawboo 51
0.5.0 was published to npm on 21 October 2026 (30). Two releases in the 90 days to 1 November 2026, 0.4.0 on 28 September and 0.5.0, below the three the line asks for (0). github.com was unreachable, so replies to issues, pull requests and Discussions are unchecked. The CI file cites issue #140 as fixed (3). One public npm package, current, with no entry in the official MCP registry for its four servers (10). CI, CodeQL, weekly Dependabot and SLSA provenance on 0.4.0 and 0.5.0, with @composio/client pinned to an alpha (8).
Emdash 70
v1.2.11 on 6 November 2026 (30). v1.2.9, v1.2.10 and v1.2.11 within two weeks (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current installers and Homebrew cask (15). Release workflows, no test CI (5). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 70.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Clawboo | Emdash | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 52 | 55 | Emdash +3 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 83 | 55 | Clawboo +28 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 75 | 55 | Clawboo +20 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 70 | 38 | Clawboo +32 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 51 | 70 | Emdash +19 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 58 | 54 | Clawboo +4 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | 0 | |
| Total | C 61.4/100 | D 53.9/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Clawboo | Emdash |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Sanreds | General Action, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-21 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Popularity | 100 npm/wk | none |
Verdicts
Clawboo
Tasks, memory, team chat and connectors are shared across five runtimes through four MCP servers, with documentation that states each default and limit. Claude Code, Codex and Hermes run with their sandboxes and approval prompts off and no setting to change it, and a reverse-proxy exposure of the MCP servers is fixed only on the unreleased main branch.
Emdash
A mature open-source app for parallel coding agents in Git worktrees, with issue intake from a dozen trackers and remote machines over SSH. Telemetry is on unless you turn it off, and no test workflow was found in the repository.
Before you call either
Clawboo
- Run
npx clawboo@latest, not a barenpx clawboo, which can reuse an older cached build. Node.js 22.12 or newer is required - On 0.5.0 behind nginx, Caddy or a Cloudflare Tunnel, deny
/api/mcp/at the proxy and setSTUDIO_ACCESS_TOKENfromopenssl rand -hex 24 - Give Claude Code, Codex and Hermes teammates only work you would let run unattended, or run Clawboo under a separate user account or VM
- Create a hard-cap budget in Settings > Insights > Governance before long runs. A fresh install has no budget and new budgets only warn
- Install
@anthropic-ai/claude-agent-sdkglobally beside Clawboo for Claude Code teammates. A one-offnpxrun cannot load it
Emdash
- Launch with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false if you don't want telemetry
- Use the SSH mode to keep agents on a remote machine
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Clawboo or Emdash?
Clawboo scores 61.4 (C) on agent readiness against Emdash's 53.9 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Emdash leads on maintenance & community.
Are Clawboo and Emdash open source?
Yes. Clawboo is open source (MIT). Emdash is open source (Apache-2.0).
Other comparisons with Clawboo or Emdash
- Agent Zero vs Emdash
- Aider vs Emdash
- Amp vs Emdash
- Antigravity CLI vs Emdash
- Auggie CLI vs Emdash
- AXLR vs Emdash
- Claude Code vs Emdash
- Cline vs Emdash
- Conductor vs Emdash
- Crush vs Emdash
- Cursor CLI vs Emdash
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Emdash
- dsh-superagent (DeepSeek) vs Emdash
- Devin vs Emdash
- Droid CLI vs Emdash
- Pi vs Emdash
- Emdash vs Gemini CLI
- Emdash vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- Emdash vs goose
- Emdash vs Harness²
- Emdash vs HarnessRouter
- Emdash vs Jules
- Emdash vs Junie CLI
- Emdash vs Kilo Code CLI
- Emdash vs Kimi Code CLI
- Emdash vs Kiro CLI
- Emdash vs Letta
- Emdash vs mini-swe-agent
- Emdash vs MiniMax Code
- Emdash vs Mistral Vibe CLI
- Emdash vs Muse Code
- Emdash vs OpenAI Agents API
- Emdash vs OpenAI Codex
- Emdash vs OpenCode
- Emdash vs OpenHands
- Emdash vs OpenMausBot
- Emdash vs Orca
- Emdash vs Paseo
- Emdash vs Prime Agent
- Emdash vs Qoder CLI
- Emdash vs Qwen Code
- Emdash vs Mirror CLI
- Emdash vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Emdash vs Sculptor
- Emdash vs T3 Code
- Emdash vs Traycer
- Emdash vs Unstoppable
- Emdash vs Verdent
- Emdash vs Vibe-Trading
- Emdash vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Amp vs Clawboo
- Antigravity CLI vs Clawboo
- Auggie CLI vs Clawboo
- AXLR vs Clawboo
- Claude Code vs Clawboo
- Clawboo vs CLI Manager
- Clawboo vs Cline
- Clawboo vs Conductor
- Clawboo vs Crush
- Clawboo vs DeepSeek Harness (dsh)
- Clawboo vs dsh-superagent (DeepSeek)
- Clawboo vs Devin
- Clawboo vs Droid CLI
- Clawboo vs Gemini CLI
- Clawboo vs GitHub Copilot CLI
- Clawboo vs goose
- Clawboo vs Harness
- Clawboo vs HarnessRouter
- Clawboo vs Jules
- Clawboo vs Junie CLI
- Clawboo vs Kilo Code CLI
- Clawboo vs Kimi Code CLI
- Clawboo vs Kiro CLI
- Clawboo vs Letta
- Clawboo vs MiniMax Code
- Clawboo vs Mistral Vibe CLI
- Clawboo vs Muse Code
- Clawboo vs OpenCode
- Clawboo vs OpenHands
- Clawboo vs OpenMausBot
- Clawboo vs Orca
- Clawboo vs Paperclip
- Clawboo vs Parallax
- Clawboo vs Paseo
- Clawboo vs Prime Agent
- Clawboo vs Qoder CLI
- Clawboo vs Qwen Code
- Clawboo vs Mirror CLI
- Clawboo vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Clawboo vs Sculptor
- Clawboo vs T3 Code
- Clawboo vs Traycer
- Clawboo vs Unstoppable
- Clawboo vs Verdent
- Clawboo vs Vibe-Trading
- Clawboo vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- CLI Manager vs Emdash
- Emdash vs Harness
- Emdash vs Paperclip
- Emdash vs Parallax
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/clawboo-vs-emdash.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/clawboo.json·/api/v1/tools/emdash.json - From a terminal
anchor compare clawboo emdash(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "clawboo", "b": "emdash"}at/mcp, no key