# CLI Manager vs Jules

> CLI Manager scores 65.8 (B) to Jules's 44.5 (E) for multi-agent orchestration. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-18

CLI Manager scores 65.8 (B) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

- CLI Manager: grade B, 65.8/100, rank #342 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/cli-manager.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/cli-manager.json
- Jules: grade E, 44.5/100, rank #1000 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/jules.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/jules.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 713 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## Which one, for what

### CLI Manager (B)

Good 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 13
- Schema & documentation, 87 against 76
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 30
- Maintenance & community, 62 against 18
- Transparency & trust, 54 against 44

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card
- 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

### Jules (E)

Good for: A person or pipeline that wants to hand scoped GitHub tasks to a cloud agent and collect a pull request or a patch, or run a repoless job in a disposable VM.

Also in its favour:
- Runs on your own machine

Watch for: The REST API has been v1alpha since 3 October 2025 and the docs say specifications and API keys may change


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | CLI Manager | Jules | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 68 | 13 | CLI Manager +55 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 87 | 76 | CLI Manager +11 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 63 | 64 | Jules +1 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 58 | 57 | CLI Manager +1 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 30 | CLI Manager +30 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 62 | 18 | CLI Manager +44 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 54 | 44 | CLI Manager +10 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| **Total** | | **65.8 · B** | **44.5 · E** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | CLI Manager | Jules |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | solhun (Jeong Kyeonghun) | Google LLC |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | Streamable HTTP | HTTP, stdio |
| Auth | API key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT | Proprietary service under the Google Terms of Service. The TypeScript SDK is Apache-2.0; the CLI binary is closed |
| Tools exposed | 12 | 8 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-13 | 2026-03-09 |
| Terms last updated | 2026-09-14 | 2026-07-30 |
| Privacy policy last updated | 2026-09-14 | 2026-10-01 |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 15 stars | 1.3k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (4) | 2.8/5 (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.

**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.

## 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

### 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

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, CLI Manager or Jules?

CLI Manager scores 65.8 (B) on agent readiness against Jules's 44.5 (E), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

### Are CLI Manager and Jules open source?

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


## For agents

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

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