# Core vs Underdog (slim)

> Underdog scores 29.9 (F) on agent readiness against Core's 7.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Core leads on transparency & trust. Both do inference open weights. Category scores, facts, verdicts and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-core-vs-underdog.md (~2,350 tokens) · this version ~680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-core-vs-underdog.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ghost-core-vs-underdog
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · Updated: 2026-10-06

Underdog scores 29.9 (F) on agent readiness against Core's 7.3 (F), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Core leads on transparency & trust. Both do inference open weights.

- Core: F 7.3, rank #460 of 460 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ghost-core.min.md
- Underdog: F 29.9, rank #451 of 460 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/underdog.min.md
- Core, good for A household that wants a dedicated box running open-weight models and a memory of its apps, files and devices at home, with a one-off price and no subscription, once it ships. Ahead on Transparency & trust, 45 against 24.
- Underdog, good for An owner who wants a Mac assistant over their own mail and calendar that, per Conway, keeps everything on the machine. Ahead on Reliability, 33 against 5; Schema & documentation, 24 against 7; Agent ergonomics, 15 against 4; Security & auth, 14 against 6; Payments & pricing, 60 against 10; Maintenance & community, 56 against 3. Also No key needed to call it.

| Category | Core | Underdog |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 5 | 33 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 7 | 24 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 4 | 15 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 6 | 14 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 10 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 3 | 56 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 45 | 24 |

| Fact (where they differ) | Core | Underdog |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | Ghost (ZMJ, Inc.) | Conway Research |
| Transports | HTTP |  |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| Licence | Not stated. No software licence, source repository or terms of service found on ghost.ai (checked 2026-10-05). Models listed are Qwen 3.8-Next, Qwen 3.8-27B, Gemma 4-31B and Muse-Glimmer-30B. Ghost doesn't state their licences, and the origin of Muse-Glimmer-30B was not found | Model weights Apache-2.0 on Hugging Face (Underdog 27B 1.0 and its ternary build, Woof 4B and 2B 1.1, Bark 0.8B 1.0); woof-1.0-4B carries the Apache-2.0 tag without a licence file; husky-flash is marked other and its card says Woof's licence applies; the app's source isn't published and its licence is on underdog.ai, unchecked |
| Last release | none | 2026-09-30 |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (1) | 2/5 (2) |