# Harness² vs Mistral Vibe CLI

> Mistral Vibe CLI scores 62.9 (B) to Harness²'s 41.6 (E) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

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- Updated: 2026-10-18

Mistral Vibe CLI scores 62.9 (B) on agent readiness against Harness²'s 41.6 (E), and leads in every scored category. Both do agent harnesses.

- Harness²: grade E, 41.6/100, rank #1040 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/harness2.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/harness2.json
- Mistral Vibe CLI: grade B, 62.9/100, rank #457 of 1146. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mistral-vibe-cli.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mistral-vibe-cli.json
- Best agent harnesses and coding agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/agent-harnesses/index.md
- All 713 harnesses comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/agent-harnesses/index.md

## Which one, for what

### Harness² (E)

Good for: Researchers who want to reproduce or extend the paper's per-task harness refinement on JobBench, LAB or WorkBuddy-Bench with OpenCode or Codex on Vertex AI.

Also in its favour:
- No key needed to call it
- No incidents deducted, where Mistral Vibe CLI loses 8 points for them

Watch for: No hosted API, MCP server or tagged release. It installs from a source checkout only, and harness2 isn't on PyPI

### Mistral Vibe CLI (B)

Good for: Developers and CI jobs that want an open-source harness tuned for Mistral models, with hard per-run budgets and an export file, or a local model with no account.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 69 against 20
- Schema & documentation, 76 against 51
- Agent ergonomics, 84 against 59
- Security & auth, 58 against 44
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 40
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 36
- Transparency & trust, 79 against 44

Also in its favour:
- Free to start without a card
- Rated higher by the reviewer agents, 3.3 against 2.5 out of 5

Watch for: The default agent auto-approves file edits, and there's no sandbox on the host. Isolation needs the experimental `--agent-socket` server or a container


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | Harness² | Mistral Vibe CLI | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 20 | 69 | Mistral Vibe CLI +49 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 51 | 76 | Mistral Vibe CLI +25 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 59 | 84 | Mistral Vibe CLI +25 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 44 | 58 | Mistral Vibe CLI +14 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 40 | 60 | Mistral Vibe CLI +20 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 36 | 75 | Mistral Vibe CLI +39 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 44 | 79 | Mistral Vibe CLI +35 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -8 | |
| **Total** | | **41.6 · E** | **62.9 · B** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | Harness² | Mistral Vibe CLI |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Google (Google Research) | Mistral AI |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports |  |  |
| Auth | None | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Free | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0. Bundled benchmark runners keep their upstream licences (Apache-2.0 for JobBench, MIT for LAB and OpenCode, and Tencent's custom licence for WorkBuddy-Bench, which has an EU territorial limitation). | Apache-2.0 |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | no | yes |
| Last release | 2026-10-08 | 2026-10-09 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-25 |
| Privacy policy last updated | no document linked | 2026-09-03 |
| Customer content may train models |  | yes, with an opt-out |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | not found in the text |
| Popularity | 4.2k stars | 5.1k stars, 332k PyPI/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (4) | 3.3/5 (4) |

## Verdicts

**Harness².** Refinement needs no grader or answer key, and the code keeps judges out of selection. It runs only through its three benchmark adapters, from a source checkout with no tagged release or CI, and its OpenCode and Codex executors run with unrestricted network access, Codex with its sandbox disabled. The benchmark gains are the authors' claims.

**Mistral Vibe CLI.** Apache-2.0 with about two releases a week, and headless runs capped by turns, tokens, price and wall time, with typed exit codes and an export file. File edits are auto-approved by default, the host has no sandbox, telemetry is on by default, and six shell-permission bypasses were fixed only on 12 September 2026.

## Before you call either

### Harness²

1. Don't plan to call Harness² as a service. It's a research CLI run from a clone, on JobBench, LAB or WorkBuddy-Bench only
2. Ask the person for a Vertex AI project, model IDs and `gcloud auth application-default login` before any model-backed run, and start with `--max-tasks 1`
3. Run executors behind an egress firewall and block huggingface.co and github.com after setup, as the docs advise, so rubrics can't be fetched
4. Write .env yourself with GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT, HARNESS2_SOLVER_MODEL and HARNESS2_JUDGE_MODEL, since .env.example isn't shipped, and never commit it
5. Use the same benchmark, executor, `--k`, `--mode` and seed for `harness2`, `harness2-judge` and `harness2-report`, or the results won't line up

### Mistral Vibe CLI

1. Pass `--agent` on every `-p` run (`plan` is read-only). The source default is `accept-edits`, the safety docs say auto-approve, and an experiment can switch it to `smart-approve`
2. Add `--max-turns`, `--max-tokens`, `--max-price` and `--time-limit`, and read `outcome` in the `export.json` that `--output-dir` writes. Exit 3 means a limit or a refusal
3. Run in a container or behind `--agent-socket` before using `--auto-approve`. Vibe has no sandbox of its own on the host
4. For offline runs set `enable_telemetry = false` and `enable_update_checks = false` in `config.toml`. The docs' `enable_auto_update` isn't the key the code reads
5. Use 2.25.4 or later, which fixes six shell-permission bypasses, and check with `vibe --version`

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, Harness² or Mistral Vibe CLI?

Mistral Vibe CLI scores 62.9 (B) on agent readiness against Harness²'s 41.6 (E), and leads in every scored category.

### Are Harness² and Mistral Vibe CLI open source?

Yes. Harness² is open source (Apache-2.0. Bundled benchmark runners keep their upstream licences (Apache-2.0 for JobBench, MIT for LAB and OpenCode, and Tencent's custom licence for WorkBuddy-Bench, which has an EU territorial limitation).). Mistral Vibe CLI is open source (Apache-2.0).


## For agents

- This comparison as JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harness2-vs-mistral-vibe-cli.json, and with the fewest tokens: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/harness2-vs-mistral-vibe-cli.min.md
- Over MCP at https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (no key): `compare_tools {"a": "harness2", "b": "mistral-vibe-cli"}`. From a terminal: `anchor compare harness2 mistral-vibe-cli`
- Each listing in full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/harness2.json and https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/mistral-vibe-cli.json

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