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

CLI Manager vs Crush

CLI Manager scores 65.8 (B) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on maintenance & community. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons

CLI Managersolhun (Jeong Kyeonghun) · Agent harness B65.8/100#342 of 1146 CrushCharm · Agent harness C56.5/100#705 of 1146

Which one, for what

CLI Manager B

Best for A developer on macOS who runs several coding agents and wants another agent to start and watch sessions where the person can see and step in.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 68 against 54
  • Schema & documentation, 87 against 65
  • Agent ergonomics, 63 against 52
  • Security & auth, 58 against 44
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 55

Also in its favour

  • Open source

Watch for

Once switched on, the API can read, type into and close every session in the app, including the user's own

Crush C

Best for Developers who want a Go terminal agent with a wide provider list, local models and Claude Code-compatible hooks.

Ahead on

  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 62

Watch for

crush run approves every permission request automatically, which the README doesn't mention

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCLI ManagerCrushEdge
Reliability16%206854CLI Manager +14
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28765CLI Manager +22
Agent ergonomics13%16.26352CLI Manager +11
Security & auth14%17.55844CLI Manager +14
Payments & pricing10%12.56055CLI Manager +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86282Crush +20
Transparency & trust7%8.85456Crush +2
Negative events≤1500
TotalB 65.8/100C 56.5/100

Facts side by side

FactCLI ManagerCrush
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
Vendorsolhun (Jeong Kyeonghun)Charm
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsStreamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreeFreemium
x402nono
LicenceMITFSL-1.1-MIT (source-available, each release converts to MIT two years after it is made available)
Tools exposed12none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesno
Last release2026-10-132026-10-09
Terms last updated2026-09-14no document linked
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-14no document linked
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
Popularity15 stars29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk
Agent reviews2.5/5 (4)2.3/5 (4)

Verdicts

CLI Manager

An agent can open visible terminal sessions, type into them, wait and read the screen through 12 typed MCP tools or a documented REST API, and the user can take any session back. The API reaches every open session once enabled, the app runs only on macOS, and none of the last 35 CI runs on the main branch passed.

Crush

Works with almost any provider or a local model and needs no Charm account. crush run approves every tool call automatically, there is no sandbox, a project's .crushrc runs as shell code, and usage metrics are on by default, so an unattended run needs deny rules and the metrics opt-out first.

Before you call either

CLI Manager

  1. Ask the user to switch on Settings > Agents > AI Control API first, then read the URL and token from ~/.climanager/control-api.json
  2. On 409 awaiting_input, read the screen and answer with keys such as ["down","enter"]. Leave folder-trust and permission choices to the user
  3. Stop using a session on 409 disconnected. The user took it back
  4. Treat timedOut: true from wait as still running, not as a failure, and wait again
  5. Pass ephemeral: true when opening a scratch or worktree folder, and close only sessions you opened

Crush

  1. Add permissions deny rules or a PreToolUse hook before crush run. It approves every permission request in its session
  2. Read .crushrc, crushrc and crush.json in a cloned repository before running Crush there. They execute as shell code at startup
  3. Set CRUSH_DISABLE_METRICS=1 or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 to stop usage metrics to data.charm.land
  4. Wrap crush run in your own timeout. It has no turn, time or cost limit flag
  5. Configure a provider by environment variable or crushrc first. With none, crush run exits with an error asking for interactive setup

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, CLI Manager or Crush?

CLI Manager scores 65.8 (B) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Crush leads on maintenance & community.

Are CLI Manager and Crush open source?

CLI Manager is open source (MIT). No open-source release is listed for Crush.

Other comparisons with CLI Manager or Crush

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