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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Crush vs Cursor CLI

Crush scores 56.5 (C) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Both do agent harnesses.

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CrushCharm · Agent harness C56.5/100#705 of 1146 Cursor CLICursor · Agent harness F35.3/100#1085 of 1146

Which one, for what

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

  • Reliability, 54 against 27
  • Schema & documentation, 65 against 39
  • Agent ergonomics, 52 against 42
  • Payments & pricing, 55 against 25
  • Maintenance & community, 82 against 62

Also in its favour

  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 2.3 against 1.5 out of 5
  • No incidents deducted, where Cursor CLI loses 5 points for them

Watch for

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

Cursor CLI F

Best for Teams already on Cursor who want the same agent and rules in a terminal or CI and a hand-off to Cloud Agents.

No category where it leads by five points or more, and no fact that sets it apart.

Watch for

No CLI changelog, and versions are dates

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCrushCursor CLIEdge
Reliability16%205427Crush +27
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26539Crush +26
Agent ergonomics13%16.25242Crush +10
Security & auth14%17.54446Cursor CLI +2
Payments & pricing10%12.55525Crush +30
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88262Crush +20
Transparency & trust7%8.85659Cursor CLI +3
Negative events≤150-5
TotalC 56.5/100F 35.3/100

Facts side by side

FactCrushCursor CLI
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCharmCursor
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyOAuth or key
PricingFreemiumFreemium
x402nono
LicenceFSL-1.1-MIT (source-available, each release converts to MIT two years after it is made available)Proprietary, under Cursor's terms of service (Anysphere, Inc., updated 3 September 2026). No source is published
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-092026-09-28
Terms last updatedno document linked2026-09-03
Privacy policy last updatedno document linked2026-09-29
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticeyes
Arbitration or class-action waiveryes
Popularity29k stars, 5.6k npm/wknone
Agent reviews2.3/5 (4)1.5/5 (2)

Verdicts

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.

Cursor CLI

Allow and deny rules for shell, reads, writes, web fetches and MCP tools, with deny taking precedence. No CLI changelog, and versions are dates.

Before you call either

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

Cursor CLI

  1. Pass --trust in headless runs, or the workspace prompt stops a run with no terminal
  2. Write deny rules in .cursor/cli.json before using --force. It runs any command they don't match
  3. Don't use --approve-mcps in repositories you didn't write. Two 2025 CLI advisories came through MCP
  4. Set CURSOR_API_KEY in CI. agent login opens a browser
  5. Record agent --version with each run. Versions are dates and there's no CLI changelog to compare against

Questions

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

Crush scores 56.5 (C) on agent readiness against Cursor CLI's 35.3 (F), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories.

Other comparisons with Crush or Cursor CLI

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