CLI Manager vs Jules

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.

Jules

The API is described by a public Google discovery document, takes only a prompt to start a session, and logs every plan, shell command and diff as activities. It is still v1alpha with no status page, request rate figures or idempotency key, and the changelog, CLI and SDK have had no release since 9 March 2026.

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

Jules

1. Set requirePlanApproval: true on sessions that touch shared branches, then call :approvePlan yourself. API sessions otherwise run their plan without review
2. Session creation has no request ID. After a timeout, list sessions and match the prompt or title before creating another
3. Poll activities with a create_time filter and cache them. Activities never change once written
4. Read the request fields from the discovery document at https://jules.googleapis.com/$discovery/rest?version=v1alpha. The field tables on jules.google render empty
5. Budget against the daily task quota of 15, 100 or 300 by plan. New sessions are refused until the rolling 24 hours reset