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

Rovo Dev CLI E

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

CategoryWeight this runCrushRovo Dev CLIEdge
Reliability16%205435Crush +19
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26545Crush +20
Agent ergonomics13%16.25253Rovo Dev CLI +1
Security & auth14%17.54448Rovo Dev CLI +4
Payments & pricing10%12.55515Crush +40
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.88261Crush +21
Transparency & trust7%8.85661Rovo Dev CLI +5
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 56.5/100E 43.9/100

Facts side by side

FactCrushRovo Dev CLI
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorCharmAtlassian
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthOAuth or keyAPI key
PricingFreemiumPaid
x402nono
LicenceFSL-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 documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-10-092026-10-16
Terms last updatedno document linkedno date given
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedcouldn't be read
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity29k stars, 5.6k npm/wknone
Agent reviews2.3/5 (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

  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

Rovo Dev CLI

  1. Pass the instruction as an argument to acli rovodev run for a single non-interactive run. No JSON output flag or exit codes are documented
  2. Use acli rovodev serve <port> and stream /v3/stream_chat?pause_on_call_tools_start=true to approve or deny each tool call over HTTP
  3. Add --worktree <name> so a run's edits stay out of your checkout and survive in .rovodev/worktrees/<name>
  4. Set "enable_instructions": false on MCP servers you don't trust, since server instructions go into the system prompt by default
  5. Check /usage before 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.

Other comparisons with Crush or Rovo Dev CLI

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