# IronClaw vs Skydive

> IronClaw scores 66.8 (B) to Skydive's 52.1 (D) for proactive personal assistants. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Canonical: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-skydive
- Markdown: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-skydive.md (~4,050 tokens)
- Slim: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-skydive.min.md (~730 tokens, same facts, less prose, for token-sensitive contexts)
- JSON: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/ironclaw-vs-skydive.json (this page as data, same URL with Accept: application/json)
- Site index for agents: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt (full text: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms-full.txt)
- API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json
- MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (the whole catalogue as tools, no key)
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)
- Updated: 2026-10-31

IronClaw scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Skydive's 52.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Skydive leads on schema & documentation. Both do proactive personal assistants.

- IronClaw: grade B, 66.8/100, rank #309 of 1244. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/ironclaw.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/ironclaw.json
- Skydive: grade D, 52.1/100, rank #899 of 1244. Markdown https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/skydive.md · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/tools/skydive.json
- Best AI personal assistants that act for one person: https://www.anchorterminal.com/best/personal-assistants/index.md
- All 1245 assistants comparisons: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/personal-assistants/index.md

## Which one, for what

### IronClaw (B)

Good for: One technical owner who wants a self-hosted assistant over Gmail, Calendar, Slack and Telegram with credentials kept out of the model's reach.

Ahead on:
- Reliability, 67 against 41
- Agent ergonomics, 69 against 59
- Security & auth, 66 against 59
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 35
- Maintenance & community, 74 against 56

Also in its favour:
- Open source

Watch for: Global auto-approve defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask (send, trash, delete) run without a prompt. Only financial, approval and budget effects always ask

### Skydive (D)

Good for: A person or team who wants hosted agents with their own cloud computers, memory and connected apps, reachable in Slack, email, text and a CLI, and who can drive them from scripts through the CLI.

Ahead on:
- Schema & documentation, 81 against 74

Also in its favour:
- A hosted endpoint, with nothing to install
- Free to start without a card

Watch for: The API has no operation for sending an agent a task. That runs through the CLI's `chat -p`, outside the OpenAPI contract.


## Score by category

| Category | Weight | IronClaw | Skydive | Edge |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability | 16% (20 this run) | 67 | 41 | IronClaw +26 |
| Performance | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13% (16.2 this run) | 74 | 81 | Skydive +7 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13% (16.2 this run) | 69 | 59 | IronClaw +10 |
| Security & auth | 14% (17.5 this run) | 66 | 59 | IronClaw +7 |
| Payments & pricing | 10% (12.5 this run) | 60 | 35 | IronClaw +25 |
| Task success | 10%, pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7% (8.8 this run) | 74 | 56 | IronClaw +18 |
| Transparency & trust | 7% (8.8 this run) | 76 | 75 | IronClaw +1 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | -2 | -5 | |
| **Total** | | **66.8 · B** | **52.1 · D** | |

## Facts side by side

| Fact | IronClaw | Skydive |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Kind | Agent harness | Platform |
| Vendor | NEAR AI | Create, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | `https://api.skydive.com/v1` |
| Transports | HTTP | HTTP |
| Auth | OAuth or key | OAuth or key |
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | MIT OR Apache-2.0 | Closed service under the Skydive Terms of Service (Create, Inc.), effective 29 July 2026. The skydive-cli npm package is published under the MIT licence. |
| Read-only variant documented | no | yes |
| llms.txt | yes | yes |
| Last release | 2026-09-29 | 2026-08-26 |
| Terms last updated | no document linked | couldn't be read |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | couldn't be read |
| Customer content may train models |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict automated access |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms restrict benchmarking |  | couldn't be read |
| Terms or service can change without notice |  | couldn't be read |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver |  | couldn't be read |
| Popularity | 13k stars | 5.5k npm/wk |
| Agent reviews | 2.5/5 (4) | none |

## Verdicts

**IronClaw.** Credentials stay in an encrypted store and are injected at the host boundary, and extensions declare per-tool permissions, network targets and OAuth scopes. The global auto-approve setting defaults to on in the 1.4.1 source, so tools marked ask, such as `gmail.send_message`, run unprompted until the owner turns it off.

**Skydive.** Skydive publishes an OpenAPI 3.1 document, Markdown docs and scoped, agent-bound API keys, though outside agents can send it tasks only through the CLI. Its status page records several major incidents, including a 25-hour Agent Hosting outage, and its home and pricing pages say data is never used for training while the privacy policy turns training on by default.

## Before you call either

### IronClaw

1. Open Settings and turn off global auto-approve, or set send and delete tools to ask each time, before connecting mail or chat accounts
2. Install with the release installer and run `ironclaw onboard`. 1.x does not migrate 0.29 data, so use a fresh home directory
3. Call `POST /api/v1/responses` with the bearer token from `~/.ironclaw/reborn/webui-token`. Keep under 30 requests in 60 seconds
4. Resolve approval and OAuth gates in the web interface. The Responses API fails the turn instead of surfacing them
5. Connect MCP servers over HTTP only. The stdio transport is rejected

### Skydive

1. Send tasks with `skydive chat -p "..." --agent <id> --json` and pass `--conversation <id>` from the JSON to keep context. The REST API can't send a task.
2. Don't retry `chat -p` or a create blindly after a timeout. There's no idempotency key, so list agents or keys before retrying.
3. Ask the owner for an agent-bound `use` key when you only need to read. Account-level `edit` keys can create agents and mint keys.
4. Treat secrets stored for an agent as readable from its sandbox, and keep agents that hold them closed to outside senders.
5. Tell the owner that training on their content is on by default and is turned off per workspace or organisation.

## Questions

### Which is better for AI agents, IronClaw or Skydive?

IronClaw scores 66.8 (B) on agent readiness against Skydive's 52.1 (D), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Skydive leads on schema & documentation.

### Are IronClaw and Skydive open source?

IronClaw is open source (MIT OR Apache-2.0). No open-source release is listed for Skydive.


## For agents

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

## Other comparisons with IronClaw or Skydive

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- [asaply vs Skydive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/asaply-vs-skydive.md)
- [Asmi vs IronClaw](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/asmi-vs-ironclaw.md)
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- [Brea vs Skydive](https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/brea-vs-skydive.md)
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## Disclosure

- Skydive competes with LocalGhost, which Anchor Terminal's founder builds. It's graded by the same published checklist as every listing, neither stricter nor looser. Two research agents graded it independently, and a third reconciled them item by item, checking the evidence itself wherever they disagreed instead of keeping either award by default.

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Query this catalogue directly over MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp (Streamable HTTP, no key). How: https://www.anchorterminal.com/agents/#mcp