# Clawboo vs Gemini CLI

> Gemini CLI scores 66.8 (B) to Clawboo's 61.4 (C) for multi-agent orchestration. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/clawboo-vs-gemini-cli
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/clawboo-vs-gemini-cli.md (~5,450 tokens)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (the key docs and every listing in one file, at most 16 MB, about 4 million tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- DNS: dig +short TXT <slug>.grade.anchorterminal.com (the grade as a DNS TXT record, for a sandbox with no HTTP where names still resolve; also top., best.<category>. and <a>.vs.<b>. under the zone, and the same under grade.letme.dev)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-11-01

Gemini CLI scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Clawboo's 61.4 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Clawboo leads on payments & pricing. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

- Clawboo: grade C, 61.4/100, rank #555 of 1251. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/clawboo.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/clawboo.json
- Gemini CLI: grade B, 66.8/100, rank #315 of 1251. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/gemini-cli.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gemini-cli.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 955 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Clawboo (C)

Good 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:
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 20

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- 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

### Gemini CLI (B)

Good for: Teams with a paid Gemini API key, Vertex AI credentials or existing Code Assist Standard or Enterprise licences that want an open-source harness with documented headless output.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 71 against 52
- Schema & documentation, 93 against 83
- Maintenance & community, 88 against 51
- Transparency & trust, 90 against 58

Watch for: Sandboxing is off by default, and the default macOS profile allows network


## Why the edge

### Payments & pricing: Clawboo +40

- Clawboo (60): No payment protocol (0). Read with the self-hosted rule. Free under MIT with nothing to buy (20). No card and no Clawboo account (20). One `npx` command installs and starts it with no sign-up (20). Model costs belong to the providers the owner connects.
- Gemini CLI (20): Harness reading of the published rubric. No payment protocol (0). Token prices and plan prices are public without a login (20). The 1,000 requests a day Google sign-in tier ended on 18 June 2026, so its 20 goes. Whether an unpaid API key still gets 250 Flash requests a day is unclear, because the quota page lists it under a notice that Gemini CLI was replaced and the 19 May blog names only paid keys (0). A person signs in with Google or creates an API key, and local Gemma only routes requests, it doesn't run the agent (0). Total 20, down from 40 on 1 October.

### Maintenance & community: Gemini CLI +37

- 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).
- Gemini CLI (88): 0.63.0 on 2026-10-06 (30). 16 stable releases since 3 July, plus weekly previews and nightlies (20). 583 open issues with priority labels and bot triage, and 252 open pull requests, though some P1 security reports sat unassigned (18). A TypeScript SDK in the repository and the run-gemini-cli GitHub Action, both current, but no SDK in a second language (10). CI, nightly evals and an Allstar policy (10).

### Transparency & trust: Gemini CLI +32

- Clawboo (58): MIT, Copyright 2026 Sanreds, with a third-party notices file (30). The docs list every file Clawboo writes, which copies of keys are encrypted and which are plain text, retention for stored tool results (7 days) and pending approvals (24 hours), and that prompts go only to connected providers. There is no privacy statement, and the website wasn't read (22). The 0.1.x line is deprecated on npm with a note in the changelog, and removals are dated in release notes, with no written deprecation policy or notice period (10). No telemetry, with the server's own outbound requests disclosed, though the npm update check has no setting (18).
- Gemini CLI (90): Apache-2.0 (30). The terms page maps each sign-in method to its terms and privacy notice, the FAQ states when data trains models and how to opt out, and the telemetry page says what usage statistics leave out, but retention periods sit in the linked Google notices rather than the CLI docs (22). Dated deprecation notices now exist. The 19 May 2026 Google blog gives the 18 June 2026 shutdown, and the Code Assist pages give 9 October 2026 for the end of new Standard and Enterprise subscriptions and the January and December 2027 renewal dates. A written release policy, and the Google Cloud terms set the deprecation policy for Gemini products sold there (the Cloud deprecations page cites section 1). The CLI's docs carry a banner dating the replacement to 18 June 2026, but the pages beneath it still advertise the ended tier (15). Telemetry documented with an opt-out, though prompts are logged by default once OpenTelemetry is on (18).

### Reliability: Gemini CLI +19

- Clawboo (52): Read as local software. The official npm package `clawboo` states Node.js 22.12 or newer, and the README says macOS, Linux and Windows are supported (20). `ci.yml` runs lint, typecheck, Vitest and a real-concurrency suite on Linux and platform suites on Windows and macOS, and `publish.yml` reruns build, lint, typecheck, tests and a clean-install boot before it publishes. 0.5.0 carries provenance from that workflow on main, so its checks passed at that commit, but run results on main couldn't be read (15). github.com was unreachable, so open crash and regression issues are unchecked. A known-issues page lists 25 entries with a status each, three of them fixed on main (5). Changesets write a changelog entry per release, and removals and the 0.2.0 database reset are called out, though breaking changes arrive in minor versions before 1.0 (12). Version 0.5.0, and SECURITY.md says pre-1.0 (0).
- Gemini CLI (71): Local-package reading. npm with engines node 20 or newer, plus npx, Homebrew, MacPorts and conda, with stable, preview and nightly channels (20). Public CI, and the 10 most recent Testing CI runs on main all passed, with a chained end-to-end workflow besides (25). 583 open issues and 252 open pull requests, triaged by bot and by hand with priority labels, though several P1 security reports from 13 September were unassigned (18). releases.md says the project follows semver as closely as possible with weekly minors and patch fixes between, but release notes have no breaking-change heading (8). 0.63.0, pre-1.0 (0). Issue counts are from the 2 October check.

### Schema & documentation: Gemini CLI +10

- 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).
- Gemini CLI (93): Framework reading. settings.schema.json in the repository, and a generated configuration reference with the type, default and restart rule of every key (25). llms.txt at geminicli.com serving the documentation as Markdown (10). Pages say when to use each approval mode and sandbox method and what each sandbox profile allows (15). Approval modes, sandbox commands and Seatbelt profiles are enums (13). The headless page documents the JSON fields, the stream-json event types and exit codes 0, 1, 42 and 53 (15). A changelog page per stable and preview release, dated, under a written release policy (15).

## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Clawboo | Gemini CLI | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 52 | 71 | Gemini CLI +19 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 83 | 93 | Gemini CLI +10 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 75 | 78 | Gemini CLI +3 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 70 | 67 | Clawboo +3 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 20 | Clawboo +40 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 51 | 88 | Gemini CLI +37 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 58 | 90 | Gemini CLI +32 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -4 | -5 | |
| **Total** | | **61.4 · C** | **66.8 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Clawboo | Gemini CLI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Sanreds | Google |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Pay per use |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-21 | 2026-10-06 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not read yet | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not read yet | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not read yet | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not read yet | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not read yet | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 100 npm/wk | 107k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 3.5/5 (2) |

## How the scores have moved

### Clawboo

No score change since it was listed.

### Gemini CLI

- +0.1 on 27 October 2026: checklist
- -5.3 on 10 October 2026 (BB to B): new evidence, correction, negative event
- -0.3 on 8 October 2026: checklist

## 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.

**Gemini CLI.** Apache-2.0, with 16 stable releases since 3 July and documented headless output. Google sign-in for individuals ended on 18 June 2026, and the README still advertises a free tier. Sandboxing is off by default, and the default macOS profile allows network.

## Before you call either

### Clawboo

1. Run `npx clawboo@latest`, not a bare `npx clawboo`, which can reuse an older cached build. Node.js 22.12 or newer is required
2. On 0.5.0 behind nginx, Caddy or a Cloudflare Tunnel, deny `/api/mcp/` at the proxy and set `STUDIO_ACCESS_TOKEN` from `openssl rand -hex 24`
3. Give Claude Code, Codex and Hermes teammates only work you would let run unattended, or run Clawboo under a separate user account or VM
4. Create a hard-cap budget in Settings > Insights > Governance before long runs. A fresh install has no budget and new budgets only warn
5. Install `@anthropic-ai/claude-agent-sdk` globally beside Clawboo for Claude Code teammates. A one-off `npx` run cannot load it

### Gemini CLI

1. Set `GEMINI_TRUST_WORKSPACE` to true only for trusted inputs in CI. Since 0.39.1 headless mode doesn't trust a folder on its own
2. Turn on the sandbox with `-s` or `tools.sandbox`, and pick a proxied Seatbelt profile on macOS to cut network
3. Set `privacy.usageStatisticsEnabled` to false to stop usage statistics
4. Since 0.63.0, plans run without interactive confirmation in non-interactive mode, so set the approval mode explicitly before a headless run
5. Authenticate with a paid Gemini API key or Vertex credentials. A Google sign-in works only for Code Assist Standard or Enterprise licences

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Clawboo or Gemini CLI?

Gemini CLI scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Clawboo's 61.4 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Clawboo leads on payments & pricing.

### Are Clawboo and Gemini CLI open source?

Yes. Clawboo is open source (MIT). Gemini CLI is open source (Apache-2.0).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/clawboo-vs-gemini-cli.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/clawboo-vs-gemini-cli.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "clawboo", "b": "gemini-cli"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare clawboo gemini-cli`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/clawboo.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/gemini-cli.json

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---

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