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

Clawboo vs Kimi Code CLI

Kimi Code CLI and Clawboo score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 62.1 (B) and 61.4 (C). Clawboo leads on security & auth. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 955 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

  • Security & auth, 70 against 45

Also in its favour

  • No key needed to call it

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

Kimi Code CLI B

Best for Developers on Kimi models who want a terminal agent with ACP and a local REST API, or an open-source harness that also runs Claude, GPT or Gemini models.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 68 against 52
  • Maintenance & community, 72 against 51

Watch for

Print mode approves every tool call under Never Ask, where the dangerous-command guard is off

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 +25

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).

Kimi Code CLI 45

Harness reading of the framework checklist. 30 for credentials and 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. OAuth tokens sit in 0600 files and shell keys aren't read unless named. Telemetry is on by default and, in the 2.2.0 package, sends events with a device ID, session ID and model name to telemetry-logs.kimi.com. Auto-update is on by default (14). Interactive sessions ask before edits and commands, and a dangerous-command guard covers rm -rf and similar, but kimi -p runs under Never Ask, where everything is approved and the guard is off, with only static deny rules left. No sandbox found, and hooks fail open (7). The MCP page warns about untrusted servers and project .kimi-code/mcp.json entries, and since 2.1.0 project config waits for workspace trust, but no prompt-injection guidance was found for fetched web pages (6). Sessions on disk, kimi export, the kimi vis session visualiser, a diagnostic log and hooks for auditing (11). SECURITY.md names private GitHub advisories and an email, supports only the latest version and gives no response time. No security.txt was found on kimi.com, kimi.ai or moonshot.ai, and OSV, the public mirror of the GitHub Advisory Database, lists no advisories for the package, though 2.1.0 shipped security fixes (7).

Maintenance & community Kimi Code CLI +21

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).

Kimi Code CLI 72

2.2.0 on 14 October 2026 (30). 32 releases on npm in the 90 days to 14 October (20). Pull requests are closed at pace, 2.3k closed against 467 open, and the changelog credits merged pull requests up to #4159 from many contributors, with 742 commits in the 90 days to 18 October. Issues lag, with 1.1k open against 391 closed, and reply times couldn't be read (11). No SDK packages. The ACP server and REST API ship inside the CLI, and Homebrew core is current at 2.2.0 (5). CI with a frozen lockfile, lint and a dependency check (sherif), with no Dependabot file found and the pass state unchecked (6).

Reliability Kimi Code CLI +16

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).

Kimi Code CLI 68

Local-package reading. An install script that verifies a checksum, npm @moonshot-ai/kimi-code with Node 22.19.0 or newer stated, and Homebrew core at 2.2.0, for macOS, Linux and Windows (20). A public CI workflow runs the build, a smoke test, sharded tests on Linux, tests on Windows, lint and typecheck. GitHub refused our requests, so whether it passes on main wasn't checked (15). Read on 18 October through shields.io counts, 1.1k issues are open against 391 closed and 467 pull requests open against 2.3k closed, in a repository whose first commit was on 22 May 2026. Which of the open issues are crashes or regressions, and how fast they are answered, couldn't be read, so the line scores the backlog alone (8). Changesets changelog with Major, Minor and Patch headings and a Breaking note in 0.28.0, but 2.0.0's only major change was a new slash command, and 2.2.0 made configs with executor = "kaos" fail validation in a minor release (10). 2.2.0, past 1.0 (15).

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runClawbooKimi Code CLIEdge
Reliability16%205268Kimi Code CLI +16
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28385Kimi Code CLI +2
Agent ergonomics13%16.27571Clawboo +4
Security & auth14%17.57045Clawboo +25
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.85172Kimi Code CLI +21
Transparency & trust7%8.85862Kimi Code CLI +4
Negative events≤15-4-4
TotalC 61.4/100B 62.1/100

Facts side by side

FactClawbooKimi Code CLI
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorSanredsMoonshot AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneOAuth or key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-212026-10-14
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-08-13
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-08-13
Customer content may train modelsnot read yetyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot read yetyes
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 yetyes
Popularity100 npm/wk37k npm/wk
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

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.

Kimi Code CLI

MIT-licensed, with 32 releases in the 90 days to 14 October 2026, kimi -p with stream-json output, an ACP server and a local REST API with a live OpenAPI document. Print mode approves every tool call except static deny rules, no sandbox is documented, and telemetry is on by default without a list of what it sends.

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

Kimi Code CLI

  1. kimi -p approves every tool call. Add [[permission.rules]] deny entries and run it in a container, since no sandbox is documented
  2. Set KIMI_LOOP_MAX_STEPS_PER_TURN for unattended runs. Steps per turn are unlimited by default
  3. Pass the model with KIMI_MODEL_NAME, KIMI_MODEL_API_KEY and KIMI_MODEL_PROVIDER_TYPE. OPENAI_API_KEY or ANTHROPIC_API_KEY in the shell is ignored otherwise
  4. Set KIMI_DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1 and use 0.41.0 or later, since earlier print-mode runs ignored it
  5. Install @moonshot-ai/kimi-code or the kimi-code formula. The kimi-cli and kimi-code packages on PyPI are the archived Python CLI

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Clawboo or Kimi Code CLI?

Kimi Code CLI and Clawboo score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 62.1 (B) and 61.4 (C). Clawboo leads on security & auth.

Are Clawboo and Kimi Code CLI open source?

Yes. Clawboo is open source (MIT). Kimi Code CLI is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Clawboo or Kimi Code CLI

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