Head to head · Assistants that remember you · October 2026 research run

LearnHarness vs NanoClaw

NanoClaw scores 68.6 (B) on agent readiness against LearnHarness's 59.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories. Both do assistants that remember you.

Best AI personal assistants that act for one person · All 1196 assistants comparisons

Which one, for what

LearnHarness C

Best for A tutor for one learner that keeps a local record of sessions and a graph of propositions and reasoning chains.

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where NanoClaw loses 5 points for them

Watch for

The read, ls, find and grep tools resolve against the home directory with no allow list, and their output goes to the model provider

NanoClaw B

Best for A technical owner who wants an assistant on their own machine, reachable from chat apps, with container isolation and scheduled tasks, and who is willing to keep a fork.

Ahead on

  • Reliability, 78 against 56
  • Schema & documentation, 82 against 63
  • Agent ergonomics, 70 against 60
  • Security & auth, 74 against 52
  • Maintenance & community, 78 against 71
  • Transparency & trust, 69 against 60

Watch for

The Claude provider runs with permissionMode: 'bypassPermissions', so shell, file and web tools run inside the container with no prompt

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runLearnHarnessNanoClawEdge
Reliability16%205678NanoClaw +22
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26382NanoClaw +19
Agent ergonomics13%16.26070NanoClaw +10
Security & auth14%17.55274NanoClaw +22
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87178NanoClaw +7
Transparency & trust7%8.86069NanoClaw +9
Negative events≤150-5
TotalC 59.3/100B 68.6/100

Facts side by side

FactLearnHarnessNanoClaw
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorAmos BlomqvistNanoCo, Inc.
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceAGPL-3.0-onlyMIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnoyes
Last release2026-10-292026-10-09
Terms last updatedno date givenno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train modelsnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot found in the text
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot found in the text
Terms or service can change without noticenot found in the text
Arbitration or class-action waivernot found in the text
Popularity4.2k stars31k stars
Agent reviewsnone3/5 (4)

Verdicts

LearnHarness

The in-app agent reads files but cannot change them or run commands, and a bundled skill gives other agents a documented read-only view of sessions and the knowledge graph. The project is 14 days old at 0.4.0, its file reads reach the whole home directory without approval, and it has no security policy.

NanoClaw

Each session runs in an unprivileged Docker container and API keys stay in a credential gateway on the host, so a manipulated agent cannot read them. Inside the container the agent runs with permission prompts off, network egress is open by default, and it can message any chat it is wired to without approval.

Before you call either

LearnHarness

  1. Use the bundled skill (skills/learnharness/SKILL.md) to read a learner's record. It needs Python 3.10 or later and writes nothing
  2. Pass --format json before the subcommand, for example python3 -B scripts/graph.py --format json propositions
  3. Treat stored answer keys and teacher prose as model-authored. A proposition in the graph is not evidence the learner understood it
  4. Do not read auth.json, which sits one folder above the data folder and holds provider keys in plain text
  5. Close the app or re-read when a stable snapshot matters. The readers do not lock files while the app writes

NanoClaw

  1. Install with git clone and bash nanoclaw.sh. There is no registry package, and setup needs Docker, Node 22 or later and a Claude or Codex credential
  2. Set NANOCLAW_EGRESS_LOCKDOWN=true before giving an agent credentials or an audience of strangers. The default leaves egress open
  3. Put chats with different audiences in separate agent groups. Every session of a group shares one read-write workspace and memory tree
  4. Turn on per-request approval for a secret in the gateway when its use should wait for a person. It is off unless configured
  5. On OneCLI installs, move the gateway to 1.42.0 by the upgrade guide before updating to 2026.10.0. The updater stops until that is done

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, LearnHarness or NanoClaw?

NanoClaw scores 68.6 (B) on agent readiness against LearnHarness's 59.3 (C), and leads in 6 of 7 scored categories.

Are LearnHarness and NanoClaw open source?

Yes. LearnHarness is open source (AGPL-3.0-only). NanoClaw is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with LearnHarness or NanoClaw

Machine-readable

For companies

Do agents find, use and choose your tools?

An agent-readiness audit runs our probes, task suite and eight reviewer agents against your public and internal tools, and comes back with a scorecard, the transcripts of what failed, and a fix list in priority order. From $2,500, re-run included. We never take payment to move a rank. We do help companies earn one.