Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
Crush vs Rovo Dev CLI
Crush scores 56.5 (C) on agent readiness against Rovo Dev CLI's 43.9 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Rovo Dev CLI leads on transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 713 harnesses comparisons
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 35
- Schema & documentation, 65 against 45
- Payments & pricing, 55 against 15
- Maintenance & community, 82 against 61
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
crush run approves every permission request automatically, which the README doesn't mention
Best for Teams already on Jira, Confluence and Bitbucket who want the agent to read and update work items and pages from the terminal or a pipeline.
Ahead on
- Transparency & trust, 61 against 56
Watch for
Atlassian has announced end of life for standalone Rovo Dev, with the CLI moving to the Rovo CLI and no dates set
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Crush | Rovo Dev CLI | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 54 | 35 | Crush +19 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 65 | 45 | Crush +20 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 52 | 53 | Rovo Dev CLI +1 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 44 | 48 | Rovo Dev CLI +4 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 55 | 15 | Crush +40 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 82 | 61 | Crush +21 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 56 | 61 | Rovo Dev CLI +5 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | C 56.5/100 | E 43.9/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Crush | Rovo Dev CLI |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Charm | Atlassian |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | OAuth or key | API key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Paid |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | FSL-1.1-MIT (source-available, each release converts to MIT two years after it is made available) | Proprietary, under the Atlassian Customer Agreement (effective 1 October 2026) and the Atlassian AI Terms (effective 17 August 2026). No source is published |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-09 | 2026-10-16 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | |
| Popularity | 29k stars, 5.6k npm/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 2.3/5 (4) | 2/5 (4) |
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.
Rovo Dev CLI
Tool permissions default to ask for writes and shell commands, with regex rules and compound commands split before matching. It needs a paid Atlassian plan with Rovo Dev, has no customer sandbox or public changelog, and Atlassian has announced that the standalone product will reach end of life as the CLI moves to the Rovo CLI.
Before you call either
Crush
- Add
permissions denyrules or a PreToolUse hook beforecrush run. It approves every permission request in its session - Read
.crushrc,crushrcandcrush.jsonin a cloned repository before running Crush there. They execute as shell code at startup - Set
CRUSH_DISABLE_METRICS=1orDO_NOT_TRACK=1to stop usage metrics to data.charm.land - Wrap
crush runin your own timeout. It has no turn, time or cost limit flag - Configure a provider by environment variable or
crushrcfirst. With none,crush runexits with an error asking for interactive setup
Rovo Dev CLI
- Pass the instruction as an argument to
acli rovodev runfor a single non-interactive run. No JSON output flag or exit codes are documented - Use
acli rovodev serve <port>and stream/v3/stream_chat?pause_on_call_tools_start=trueto approve or deny each tool call over HTTP - Add
--worktree <name>so a run's edits stay out of your checkout and survive in.rovodev/worktrees/<name> - Set
"enable_instructions": falseon MCP servers you don't trust, since server instructions go into the system prompt by default - Check
/usagebefore long runs. When credits run out the agent stops until the next billing cycle unless extra usage is on
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Crush or Rovo Dev CLI?
Crush scores 56.5 (C) on agent readiness against Rovo Dev CLI's 43.9 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Rovo Dev CLI leads on transparency & trust.
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- Cursor CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- DeepSeek Harness (dsh) vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Devin vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Droid CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Pi vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Gemini CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- GitHub Copilot CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- goose vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Harness² vs Rovo Dev CLI
- HarnessRouter vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Jules vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Junie CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Kilo Code CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Kimi Code CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Kiro CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- mini-swe-agent vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Mistral Vibe CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Muse Code vs Rovo Dev CLI
- OpenAI Codex vs Rovo Dev CLI
- OpenCode vs Rovo Dev CLI
- OpenHands vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Prime Agent vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Qoder CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Qwen Code vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Mirror CLI vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Rovo Dev CLI vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- CLI Manager vs Crush
- CLI Manager vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Crush vs Harness
- Crush vs Paperclip
- Crush vs Parallax
- Harness vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Paperclip vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Parallax vs Rovo Dev CLI
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/crush-vs-rovo-dev-cli.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/crush.json·/api/v1/tools/rovo-dev-cli.json - From a terminal
anchor compare crush rovo-dev-cli(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "crush", "b": "rovo-dev-cli"}at/mcp, no key