Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
Emdash vs mini-swe-agent
mini-swe-agent scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Emdash's 53.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Emdash leads on maintenance & community. Both do agent harnesses.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 1500 harnesses comparisons
Which one, for what
Emdash D
Best for Developers who want parallel agents in worktrees, fed from their issue tracker, locally or over SSH.
Ahead on
- Maintenance & community, 70 against 32
Watch for
Telemetry on unless turned off in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false
Best for Benchmark runs, research baselines and RL or fine-tuning pipelines that want a minimal, readable agent with a linear trajectory, and for people who want to read every line of their harness.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 65 against 55
- Agent ergonomics, 69 against 55
- Security & auth, 58 against 38
Also in its favour
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
The default local environment runs commands on the host with no isolation and the full host environment
Why the edge
Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.
Maintenance & community Emdash +38
Emdash 70
v1.2.11 on 6 November 2026 (30). v1.2.9, v1.2.10 and v1.2.11 within two weeks (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current installers and Homebrew cask (15). Release workflows, no test CI (5). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 70.
mini-swe-agent 32
2.4.6 on PyPI on 2026-07-23, 104 days before this check, and still the newest tag (10). No release in the 90 days to 4 November (0). Main hasn't moved since 3 September (three commits since 23 July, one from pre-commit-ci). Outside fixes were merged within days through July, but no pull request has been merged since #917 (17 August), 77 of the 85 pull requests numbered after it still carry open merge refs on the git remote, and maintainer reply times couldn't be read; the 18 October shields.io counts are struck (5). The Python library ships in the same package as the CLI and is current (10). Dependabot and pre-commit-ci run, and CI workflows exist with their current state unconfirmed (7).
Security & auth mini-swe-agent +20
Emdash 38
Harness reading. Telemetry is described as optional and disabled in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false, which reads as on by default (15 of 30). Worktree per task and remote machines over SSH (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). No security policy file found (3). 15 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 38.
mini-swe-agent 58
Harness reading of the framework checklist, used for every harness in this batch. 30 for what leaves the machine by default, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. No telemetry in mini's own source, and prompts go only to the configured provider. LiteLLM's own network behaviour wasn't checked (28). The CLI asks before each command by default, with regex whitelists and -y to skip, but the Python DefaultAgent never asks, the default local environment has no isolation and passes the full host environment to every command, and the experimental bubblewrap sandbox leaks host variables and shares the network (CVE-2026-108592). Docker forwards no host variables unless listed (8). No prompt-injection guidance found (2). A full trajectory of every command and output saved as JSON after each step, and a trajectory inspector (13). A security policy (docs/SECURITY.md) naming four maintainers to contact by email, with no response time, which meets the disclosure-policy reading at 7 as for cowagent and tokenrip. No bounty or advisory page, and CVE-2026-108592 (VulnCheck, 10 October) still has no fix in any release or on main. Compromised LiteLLM 1.82.7 and 1.82.8 are excluded in the dependency pins since 24 March 2026 (#794) (7).
Agent ergonomics mini-swe-agent +14
Emdash 55
Harness reading. Issue intake from Linear, GitHub, Jira and others, diff review, pull requests and CI checks in one place, local or over SSH (55).
mini-swe-agent 69
Harness reading of the framework line, scored on what an agent or pipeline driving it has to supply. One bash tool and a short system prompt, with output over 10,000 characters cut to its first and last 5,000, but no compaction of a long history (22). Step, cost and wall-time limits, global call and cost limits by environment variable, and a 30-second timeout per command (18). The trajectory JSON records Submitted, LimitsExceeded, TimeExceeded or RepeatedFormatError, but stdout is human-readable only and these aren't process exit codes (12). Model calls retry ten times with exponential backoff, and the trajectory is saved after every step, but there's no resume and no undo (8). Python bindings only. An unattended mini run needs -y, --exit-immediately and MSWEA_CONFIGURED, the last found only in the source (9). No MCP client, ACP or server mode.
Reliability mini-swe-agent +10
Emdash 55
Local software. Homebrew cask and installers for macOS, Windows and Linux (20). A code-consistency check and release workflows; no test workflow found (10). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Stable tags to v1.2.11, release notes on GitHub (10). Version 1.2.11 (15). 20 + 10 + 0 + 10 + 15 = 55.
mini-swe-agent 65
Read as a local package, graded on 2.4.6, the release pip install mini-swe-agent installs, and still the newest tag on 4 November 2026. One official PyPI package with Python 3.10 or newer stated (20). A pytest workflow runs on every push to main with Podman, bubblewrap and Apptainer installed, 41 test files and Codecov coverage, but GitHub's pages refused this run, so whether main passes is unconfirmed (15). Issue counts and types couldn't be read (the 18 October counts came from shields.io, a third-party copy, and are struck). The git remote shows outside bug fixes merged through 22 July, such as #915, #896 and #886, and nothing merged into main since apart from a pre-commit update on 17 August, while 77 of the 85 pull requests numbered after #917 still carry open merge refs (10). Versions follow semver and v2's breaking changes came with a migration guide, but there's no changelog file and tags carry only a version bump (8). 2.4.6, past 1.0, though the PyPI classifier still says 3 - Alpha (12).
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Emdash | mini-swe-agent | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 55 | 65 | mini-swe-agent +10 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 55 | 58 | mini-swe-agent +3 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 55 | 69 | mini-swe-agent +14 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 38 | 58 | mini-swe-agent +20 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 70 | 32 | Emdash +38 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 54 | 56 | mini-swe-agent +2 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | D 53.9/100 | C 59/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Emdash | mini-swe-agent |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | General Action, Inc. | SWE-bench team (Princeton and Stanford) |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | None | None |
| Pricing | Free | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-07-23 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | no document linked |
| Popularity | none | 8.6k stars, 4.4M PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | none | 3/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Emdash
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Emdash
A mature open-source app for parallel coding agents in Git worktrees, with issue intake from a dozen trackers and remote machines over SSH. Telemetry is on unless you turn it off, and no test workflow was found in the repository.
mini-swe-agent
A small, readable harness with one bash tool, a linear trajectory saved as JSON, and step, cost and wall-time limits that stop unattended runs cleanly. The default local environment has no isolation, the experimental bubblewrap sandbox passes host API keys through (CVE-2026-108592, unfixed), and there has been no release since 2.4.6 on 23 July 2026.
Before you call either
Emdash
- Launch with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false if you don't want telemetry
- Use the SSH mode to keep agents on a remote machine
mini-swe-agent
- Run with
-y --exit-immediatelyfor unattended use. Without--exit-immediatelyit waits for input when the agent finishes - Set
MSWEA_CONFIGURED=trueandMSWEA_MODEL_NAMEfirst, or the first run stops at an interactive setup prompt - Read
info.exit_statusin the-otrajectory file. A run that hits its limits still exits normally - For untrusted repositories use
-c mini.yaml -c environment.environment_class=docker -c environment.image=<image>. The local and bubblewrap environments both expose host variables - Strip model keys from the environment commands see, since the local environment passes every host variable to each command
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Emdash or mini-swe-agent?
mini-swe-agent scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Emdash's 53.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Emdash leads on maintenance & community.
Are Emdash and mini-swe-agent open source?
Yes. Emdash is open source (Apache-2.0). mini-swe-agent is open source (MIT).
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- Emdash vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Gemini CLI vs mini-swe-agent
- GitHub Copilot CLI vs mini-swe-agent
- goose vs mini-swe-agent
- Harness² vs mini-swe-agent
- HarnessRouter vs mini-swe-agent
- Jules vs mini-swe-agent
- Junie CLI vs mini-swe-agent
- Kilo Code CLI vs mini-swe-agent
- Kimi Code CLI vs mini-swe-agent
- Kiro CLI vs mini-swe-agent
- Letta vs mini-swe-agent
- mini-swe-agent vs MiniMax Code
- mini-swe-agent vs Mistral Vibe CLI
- mini-swe-agent vs Muse Code
- mini-swe-agent vs OpenAI Agents API
- mini-swe-agent vs OpenAI Codex
- mini-swe-agent vs OpenCode
- mini-swe-agent vs OpenHands
- mini-swe-agent vs OpenMausBot
- mini-swe-agent vs Orca
- mini-swe-agent vs Paseo
- mini-swe-agent vs Prime Agent
- mini-swe-agent vs Qoder CLI
- mini-swe-agent vs Qwen Code
- mini-swe-agent vs Mirror CLI
- mini-swe-agent vs Rovo Dev CLI
- mini-swe-agent vs Sculptor
- mini-swe-agent vs T3 Code
- mini-swe-agent vs Traycer
- mini-swe-agent vs Unstoppable
- mini-swe-agent vs Verdent
- mini-swe-agent vs Vibe-Trading
- mini-swe-agent vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Clawboo vs Emdash
- CLI Manager vs Emdash
- Emdash vs Harness
- Emdash vs Paperclip
- Emdash vs Parallax
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/emdash-vs-mini-swe-agent.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/emdash.json·/api/v1/tools/mini-swe-agent.json - From a terminal
anchor compare emdash mini-swe-agent(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "emdash", "b": "mini-swe-agent"}at/mcp, no key