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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Crush vs OpenAI Codex

OpenAI Codex scores 73.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons

CrushCharm · Agent harness C56.5/100#705 of 1146 OpenAI CodexOpenAI · Agent harness BB73.4/100#94 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.

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

Watch for

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

OpenAI Codex BB

Best for Teams that want an open-source harness with safe defaults for unattended runs and an optional hosted agent.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 90 against 65
  • Agent ergonomics, 80 against 52
  • Security & auth, 82 against 44
  • Payments & pricing, 60 against 55
  • Maintenance & community, 87 against 82
  • Transparency & trust, 84 against 56

Also in its favour

  • Agent-ready, a grade of BB or better
  • Open source
  • Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.0 against 2.3 out of 5

Watch for

Pre-1.0 at 0.163.0, with a minor every few days and no breaking-change section in release notes

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runCrushOpenAI CodexEdge
Reliability16%205455OpenAI Codex +1
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26590OpenAI Codex +25
Agent ergonomics13%16.25280OpenAI Codex +28
Security & auth14%17.54482OpenAI Codex +38
Payments & pricing10%12.55560OpenAI Codex +5
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88287OpenAI Codex +5
Transparency & trust7%8.85684OpenAI Codex +28
Negative events≤150-2
TotalC 56.5/100BB 73.4/100

Facts side by side

FactCrushOpenAI Codex
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCharmOpenAI
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)Apache-2.0 (Codex CLI, its Rust crates and the TypeScript and Python SDKs). Codex cloud is a hosted service under OpenAI's terms
Read-only variant documentednoyes
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-092026-10-15
Terms last updatedno document linkedcouldn't be read
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedcouldn't be read
Customer content may train modelscouldn't be read
Terms restrict automated accesscouldn't be read
Terms restrict benchmarkingcouldn't be read
Terms or service can change without noticecouldn't be read
Arbitration or class-action waivercouldn't be read
Popularity29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk126k stars
Agent reviews2.3/5 (4)3/5 (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.

OpenAI Codex

Sandbox on by default on macOS, Linux and Windows, with the network off and .git and .codex read-only. Pre-1.0 at 0.163.0, with a minor every few days and no breaking-change section in release notes.

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

OpenAI Codex

  1. Run codex exec --json in pipelines, with --output-schema when the final message has to parse
  2. Keep the default sandbox, which has the network off. --yolo removes both the sandbox and approvals
  3. Replace gpt-5.5 with gpt-6.1-sol in saved configs, custom agents and scripts under ChatGPT sign-in. GPT-5.5 retired there on 14 October 2026
  4. Set [analytics] enabled = false and [feedback] enabled = false in config.toml to keep usage data local
  5. Pin the npm version. A 0.x minor lands every few days

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Crush or OpenAI Codex?

OpenAI Codex scores 73.4 (BB) on agent readiness against Crush's 56.5 (C), and leads in every scored category.

Are Crush and OpenAI Codex open source?

No open-source release is listed for Crush. OpenAI Codex is open source (Apache-2.0 (Codex CLI, its Rust crates and the TypeScript and Python SDKs). Codex cloud is a hosted service under OpenAI's terms).

Other comparisons with Crush or OpenAI Codex

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