Write a review

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

CLI Manager vs Paperclip

CLI Manager scores 65.8 (B) on agent readiness against Paperclip's 59 (C), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Paperclip leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust. Both do multi-agent orchestration.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 243 harnesses comparisons

CLI Managersolhun (Jeong Kyeonghun) · Agent harness B65.8/100#329 of 1084 PaperclipPaperclip Labs, Inc. · Agent harness C59/100#599 of 1084

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

  • Schema & documentation, 87 against 81

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Paperclip loses 10 points for them

Watch for

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

Paperclip C

Best for Someone running several coding or operations agents who wants one place for tasks, budgets, approvals and history across harnesses.

Ahead on

  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 63
  • Security & auth, 64 against 58
  • Maintenance & community, 78 against 62
  • Transparency & trust, 65 against 54

Watch for

claude_local defaults dangerouslySkipPermissions to true and codex_local defaults to bypassing approvals and the sandbox, with agents running on the host

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCLI ManagerPaperclipEdge
Reliability16%206866CLI Manager +2
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.28781CLI Manager +6
Agent ergonomics13%16.26370Paperclip +7
Security & auth14%17.55864Paperclip +6
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.86278Paperclip +16
Transparency & trust7%8.85465Paperclip +11
Negative events≤150-10
TotalB 65.8/100C 59/100

Facts side by side

FactCLI ManagerPaperclip
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
Vendorsolhun (Jeong Kyeonghun)Paperclip Labs, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
TransportsStreamable HTTP
AuthAPI keyOAuth or key
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITMIT
Tools exposed12none
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtyesyes
Last release2026-10-132026-10-05
Terms last updated2026-09-142026-07-23
Privacy policy last updated2026-09-142026-07-23
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the textyes, with an opt-out
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the textnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the textnot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the textyes
Popularity15 stars99k stars, 60k npm/wk

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.

Paperclip

Board approvals, budgets with a hard stop and an activity log sit above whichever harnesses do the work, and eleven stable versions shipped in 90 days. The Claude Code and Codex adapters skip permission prompts and the sandbox by default, and twelve security advisories, five of them critical, have been published since April 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

Paperclip

  1. Set PAPERCLIP_TELEMETRY_DISABLED=1 or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 before the first start. Telemetry is on by default
  2. Set dangerouslySkipPermissions and dangerouslyBypassApprovalsAndSandbox to false on agents that read untrusted input, or run them in a sandbox provider
  3. Install with Node.js 24.11 or newer, and install and sign in to each harness CLI on the host first. Paperclip assumes they are there
  4. Use --bind lan or --bind tailnet at onboarding for anything beyond one machine. The default local_trusted mode treats every request as the board admin
  5. Treat 409 on task checkout as owned by another agent and pick different work. The API docs say not to retry

Questions

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

CLI Manager scores 65.8 (B) on agent readiness against Paperclip's 59 (C), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Paperclip leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth, maintenance & community and transparency & trust.

Are CLI Manager and Paperclip open source?

Yes. CLI Manager is open source (MIT). Paperclip is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with CLI Manager or Paperclip

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.

Get an auditSee a sample report