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Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Emdash vs Paseo

Paseo scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against Emdash's 53.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Emdash leads on reliability. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 1500 harnesses comparisons

EmdashGeneral Action, Inc. · Agent harness D53.9/100#933 of 1510 PaseoMohamed Boudra · Agent harness B62.1/100#577 of 1510

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

  • Reliability, 55 against 50

Watch for

Telemetry on unless turned off in Settings or with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false

Paseo B

Best for Developers who want parallel coding agents on their own machines with no telemetry, reachable from anywhere.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 65 against 55
  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 55
  • Security & auth, 58 against 38
  • Maintenance & community, 75 against 70
  • Transparency & trust, 68 against 54

Watch for

Pre-1.0, at 0.15.3

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.

Security & auth Paseo +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.

Paseo 58

Harness reading. The README says no telemetry, tracking or forced log-ins (30 of 30). Worktree per agent, on your own machine (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). SECURITY.md (8). 30 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 8 = 58.

Agent ergonomics Paseo +15

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).

Paseo 70

Harness reading. A self-hosted daemon that agents can use to create worktrees, launch other agents and talk to them, scriptable from the CLI (70).

Transparency & trust Paseo +14

Emdash 54

Apache 2.0 (30). A telemetry page on the docs site (not read) (18 of 30). No deprecation policy (5). Disclosed with an opt-out (15 of 20). 30 + 18 + 5 + 15 = 68.

Paseo 68

Apache 2.0 for everything but third-party components (30). No telemetry and agents run on your machine (22 of 30). CHANGELOG.md, no deprecation policy (10). States no telemetry (20). 30 + 22 + 10 + 20 = 82.

Schema & documentation Paseo +10

Emdash 55

Harness reading. Docs site and a workspace server package (55).

Paseo 65

Harness reading. Public docs, a CLI and plugin examples in the repository (65).

Reliability Emdash +5

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.

Paseo 50

Local software. Desktop builds, an Android APK, a Docker image and a Nix package (20). ci.yml on the repository; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). CHANGELOG.md (15). Version 0.15.3 (0). 20 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 50.

Maintenance & community Paseo +5

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.

Paseo 75

v0.15.3 and commits on 7 November 2026 (30). More than three releases in 90 days (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). Current builds (15). CI on push (10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 = 75.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runEmdashPaseoEdge
Reliability16%205550Emdash +5
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.25565Paseo +10
Agent ergonomics13%16.25570Paseo +15
Security & auth14%17.53858Paseo +20
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87075Paseo +5
Transparency & trust7%8.85468Paseo +14
Negative events≤1500
TotalD 53.9/100B 62.1/100

Facts side by side

FactEmdashPaseo
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorGeneral Action, Inc.Mohamed Boudra
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0Apache-2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-062026-11-07
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked

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.

Paseo

A self-hosted, open-source workspace for running many coding agents on your own machines, scriptable from the CLI and reachable from phone, web or desktop, with no telemetry or forced log-in. It's pre-1.0 and run largely by one maintainer.

Before you call either

Emdash

  1. Launch with TELEMETRY_ENABLED=false if you don't want telemetry
  2. Use the SSH mode to keep agents on a remote machine

Paseo

  1. Run the daemon on the machine that has your tools and credentials, and connect from the clients
  2. Script runs from the CLI for repeatable agent jobs

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Emdash or Paseo?

Paseo scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against Emdash's 53.9 (D), and leads in 5 of 7 scored categories. Emdash leads on reliability.

Are Emdash and Paseo open source?

Yes. Emdash is open source (Apache-2.0). Paseo is open source (Apache-2.0).

Other comparisons with Emdash or Paseo

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