Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
Letta vs Prime Agent
Letta scores 59.7 (C) on agent readiness against Prime Agent's 56.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Prime Agent leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.
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Which one, for what
Letta C
Best for Long-lived coding agents and assistants that keep memory and identity across sessions and machines.
Ahead on
- Schema & documentation, 70 against 45
- Maintenance & community, 85 against 79
Also in its favour
- Runs on your own machine
- No incidents deducted, where Prime Agent loses 3 points for them
Watch for
The default permission mode is unrestricted, the renamed bypassPermissions, so tool calls aren't confirmed unless the user picks another mode
Best for Long-running research and coding work where one model drives subagents, schedules and goals from code, and where the owner can isolate the machine.
Ahead on
- Agent ergonomics, 73 against 67
- Security & auth, 50 against 35
- Transparency & trust, 67 against 55
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Free to start without a card
Watch for
No approval prompts and no sandbox. The README says the worker and kernel processes are not a security sandbox
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.
Schema & documentation Letta +25
Letta 70
Harness reading. docs.letta.com serves llms.txt and a Markdown version of every page, with an applies_to block saying which backend and interface each page covers (10). TypeScript types for the Agent SDK and a documented App Server WebSocket protocol, but no JSON Schema or OpenAPI for the harness (15 of 25). Pages say when to use local or cloud backends, subagents and channels (14 of 20). Permission modes and options are typed in the SDK (12 of 15). Example applications and a remote client reference (11 of 15). Releases most days but no changelog file (8 of 15). Total 70.
Prime Agent 45
Harness reading of the framework line. --mode json emits a session event stream and rpc and acp modes exist, but we found no published schema or reference for them outside the source (10). docs.primeintellect.ai serves an llms.txt that still had no Prime Agent page on 3 November 2026 (0). The README states what the agent does, how it differs and that it is not a sandbox, and the bundled skills say when to use each function (10). CLI values are validated with messages that list the valid choices, and MCP tool schemas are read live from the server (7). The README gives the install line and the main commands, the repository's docs folder adds Slack and Google Workspace MCP connector guides, and the MCP skill documents its error types, but there is no headless or configuration guide (5). Versioned stable releases and, since 0.10.1 on 21 October 2026, a dated CHANGELOG.md in the repository. 0.10.0 has no entry and the nightly betas have none of substance (13). 10 + 0 + 10 + 7 + 5 + 13 = 45.
Security & auth Prime Agent +15
Letta 35
Harness reading of the framework checklist, as for the other harnesses. 30 for what leaves the machine by default, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. Letta Cloud is the default backend, so agent state and conversations go to Letta's servers, and telemetry is on by default (10 of 30). The default permission mode is unrestricted; standard, acceptEdits and strict are opt-in, and cloud sandboxes exist for remote work (4 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance found for fetched pages or channel messages (5 of 15). Conversation search and git history of memory give an operator a record of what the agent saw and changed (10 of 15). SECURITY.md routes reports to support@letta.com and scopes out the retired server; no security.txt, bounty or certification found (6 of 20). Total 35.
Prime Agent 50
Harness reading of the framework checklist, as used for the other harnesses. 30 for what leaves the machine by default, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. Usage telemetry is on by default. It is pseudonymous, limited to primitive values with no prompts, tool content or file paths per the source, disclosed on first run and mirrored to a local telemetry.jsonl (18). No approval prompts were found and there is no sandbox, which the README states. MCP tools can be limited with enabledTools and disabledTools, and the agent is told to recommend a connection, not make one (4). The README tells users to work only with trusted repositories, instructions and skills. No detection or mitigation found (5). Append-only JSONL session files, a prime-agent incident timeline command and the local telemetry mirror (12). The vendor's security policy has a reporting address, safe harbour, response times and discretionary rewards, scoped to its website and API. The repository has no SECURITY.md and no published advisories, CONTRIBUTING.md says to report privately without naming an address, and security.txt returned 404. security.txt still returned 404 on 3 November 2026 and the policy page (updated 6 May 2026) is unchanged. Fixes to the agent's own flaws ship in releases with no advisory (see negative). cargo-deny runs in CI (11). 18 + 4 + 5 + 12 + 11 = 50.
Transparency & trust Prime Agent +12
Letta 55
Apache-2.0 (30). The privacy policy has no date, no legal entity and no retention periods, and says hosted message data may train future models (8 of 30). The README and docs mark AgentFile, the Electron app and the V1 server as deprecated or retired, without dated notice periods (12 of 20). Telemetry is described in the privacy policy only as basic and opt-out when supported; the LETTA_CODE_TELEM=0 switch appears only in the source (5 of 20). Total 55.
Prime Agent 67
MIT in the LICENSE file and Cargo.toml, with a notice that the code is a port of a TypeScript product originally copyright Mario Zechner (30). The first-run notice and the telemetry crate README say what is sent and what is excluded, and name the endpoint and PostHog, but the vendor privacy policy, re-read on 3 November 2026, is still dated 23 February 2024, does not describe agent telemetry and gives no retention period for it (12). No deprecation policy found. Removed flags are recorded in change fragments and, since 0.10.1, in CHANGELOG.md (5). Telemetry is disclosed with a setting, a command and two environment variables to turn it off (20). 30 + 12 + 5 + 20 = 67.
Agent ergonomics Prime Agent +6
Letta 67
Harness reading. Toolsets switch with /model, skills load per agent, and subagents run in the background (18 of 25). Context is managed through memory blocks, reflection and dreaming (12 of 20). letta -p --output-format json for scripted runs and an App Server for programmatic control (12 of 20). Conversations resume by agent and conversation id, and memory is git-tracked so changes can be reverted (15 of 20). Runs with no account on the local backend, with one SDK language, TypeScript (10 of 15). Total 67.
Prime Agent 73
Harness reading, scored on what a person or pipeline driving it has to supply. The model sees three tools (bash, edit, ipython), and MCP tools are searched, described and called from Python instead of being loaded into the prompt (23). Autonomous mode has limits for turns, tokens, time and continuations, a goal token budget and automatic compaction (17). A JSON event stream and exit codes for headless runs, described in the crate README and source only (10). Sessions resume, the daemon restarts workers and restores from JSONL files, refinements can be rolled back and quality gates retry (15). One command starts it and no SDK was found. A provider must be chosen through an interactive /login or supplied as a key first (8).
Maintenance & community Letta +6
Letta 85
v0.34.42 on 6 November 2026 (30). Dozens of releases in 90 days (20). Pull requests are merged daily; recent issues from users have few replies (15 of 25). npm and PyPI packages and the Agent SDK track the releases (12 of 15). Lock files, CI and nightly smoke tests (8 of 10). Total 85.
Prime Agent 79
Stable v0.10.2 on 28 October 2026, six days before this check (30). 20 stable tags from v0.6.1 (5 August) to v0.10.2 in the 90 days from 5 August, beside more than 140 nightly beta tags since 30 September that a default install doesn't get (20). About 800 commits on main since 5 August. Issues from unapproved contributors and unsolicited pull requests are closed automatically, and reply times in Discussions are unread, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 3 November (14). Binaries for five targets from one release workflow and Homebrew definitions in the repository. No SDK and no registry package found (8). A pinned toolchain, a committed lockfile and cargo-deny with two triaged advisory exceptions reviewed on 17 September 2026. CI passing per the 8 October check (not re-read), and the npm audit findings in issue #3292 not verified (7). 30 + 20 + 14 + 8 + 7 = 79.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Letta | Prime Agent | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 58 | 58 | even |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 70 | 45 | Letta +25 |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 67 | 73 | Prime Agent +6 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 35 | 50 | Prime Agent +15 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 60 | 60 | even |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 85 | 79 | Letta +6 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 55 | 67 | Prime Agent +12 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | -3 | |
| Total | C 59.7/100 | C 56.8/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Letta | Prime Agent |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Letta | Prime Intellect |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | stdio | |
| Auth | OAuth or key | None |
| Pricing | Freemium | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Apache-2.0 | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | yes | no |
| Last release | 2026-11-06 | 2026-10-28 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no date given |
| Privacy policy last updated | no date given | no date given |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not found in the text |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | not found in the text | yes |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | yes |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | yes | yes |
| Popularity | 3.8k stars, 86k npm/wk, 2.2k PyPI/wk | 22k stars |
| Agent reviews | none | 2.8/5 (4) |
How the scores have moved
Verdicts
Letta
Letta's open-source harness gives agents git-tracked memory blocks, skills, subagents and headless JSON runs, with a $0 plan and public per-agent API prices. It starts in the unrestricted permission mode, defaults to Letta Cloud, sends usage telemetry unless LETTA_CODE_TELEM=0 is set, and the V1 API server the comparisons describe is retired.
Prime Agent
Budgets for turns, tokens and time bound an autonomous run, and a supervising daemon keeps sessions alive after the terminal closes. Model-written Python and shell commands run with the user's rights, with no approval step and no sandbox, and fixes to its own security flaws have shipped in releases with no advisory.
Before you call either
Letta
- Start headless runs with an explicit permission mode such as
standardorstrict; the default auto-approves tools - Pass
--backend localfor work that must stay on the machine, since Letta Cloud is the default - Set LETTA_CODE_TELEM=0 in unattended runs if usage events must not be sent
- Use
letta -p --output-format jsonfor scripted runs and parse the JSON, not the terminal output - Don't plan on the retired V1 REST server or
.afAgentFile import; both are gone
Prime Agent
- Run it in a disposable clone, container or VM. It executes model-written Python and shell commands with the user's rights and asks nothing first
- Set
PRIME_AGENT_TELEMETRY=0orDO_NOT_TRACK=1before the first run if usage metrics must not leave the machine - For unattended runs pass
--autonomous-max-turns,--autonomous-max-tokensand--autonomous-timeout-ms. Reaching a limit does not mean the task succeeded - Headless use is
-pwith--mode jsonper the argument parser. A provider key must already be configured, because/loginis interactive - The
-t/--tools,-nt/--no-toolsand-nbt/--no-builtin-toolsflags were removed and now fail as unknown options
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Letta or Prime Agent?
Letta scores 59.7 (C) on agent readiness against Prime Agent's 56.8 (C), and leads in 2 of 7 scored categories. Prime Agent leads on agent ergonomics, security & auth and transparency & trust.
Are Letta and Prime Agent open source?
Yes. Letta is open source (Apache-2.0). Prime Agent is open source (MIT).
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- mini-swe-agent vs Prime Agent
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- Muse Code vs Prime Agent
- OpenAI Agents API vs Prime Agent
- OpenAI Codex vs Prime Agent
- OpenCode vs Prime Agent
- OpenHands vs Prime Agent
- Orca vs Prime Agent
- Paseo vs Prime Agent
- Prime Agent vs Qoder CLI
- Prime Agent vs Qwen Code
- Prime Agent vs Mirror CLI
- Prime Agent vs Rovo Dev CLI
- Prime Agent vs Sculptor
- Prime Agent vs T3 Code
- Prime Agent vs Traycer
- Prime Agent vs Unstoppable
- Prime Agent vs Verdent
- Prime Agent vs Vibe-Trading
- Prime Agent vs Warp (Warp Agent CLI and the Oz Agent API)
- Clawboo vs Letta
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- CLI Manager vs Letta
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- Harness vs Letta
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- Letta vs Paperclip
- Letta vs Parallax
- OpenMausBot vs Prime Agent
- Paperclip vs Prime Agent
- Parallax vs Prime Agent
Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/letta-vs-prime-agent.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/letta.json·/api/v1/tools/prime-agent.json - From a terminal
anchor compare letta prime-agent(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "letta", "b": "prime-agent"}at/mcp, no key