# mini-swe-agent vs Sculptor (slim)

> mini-swe-agent scores 59 (C) to Sculptor's 53.1 (D) for agent harnesses. Prices, MCP, x402, uptime and agent notes side by side.

- Full: https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mini-swe-agent-vs-sculptor.md (~5,350 tokens) · this version ~1,680 tokens · JSON https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mini-swe-agent-vs-sculptor.json · canonical https://www.anchorterminal.com/compare/mini-swe-agent-vs-sculptor
- Index: https://www.anchorterminal.com/llms.txt · API: https://www.anchorterminal.com/api/v1/index.json · MCP: https://www.anchorterminal.com/mcp · Updated: 2026-11-07
- Licence: CC BY 4.0, credit Anchor Terminal and link this page (https://www.anchorterminal.com/terms/#data)

mini-swe-agent scores 59 (C) on agent readiness against Sculptor's 53.1 (D), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Sculptor leads on maintenance & community. Both do agent harnesses.

- mini-swe-agent: C 59, rank #719 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/mini-swe-agent.min.md
- Sculptor: D 53.1, rank #966 of 1510 · https://www.anchorterminal.com/tools/sculptor.min.md
- mini-swe-agent, good for Benchmark runs, research baselines and RL or fine-tuning pipelines that want a minimal, readable agent with a linear trajectory, and for people who want to read every line of their harness. Ahead on Reliability, 65 against 43; Schema & documentation, 58 against 45; Agent ergonomics, 69 against 50. Also Free to start without a card.
- Sculptor, good for Developers who want parallel coding agents in isolated workspaces and are fine with a research preview. Ahead on Maintenance & community, 75 against 32.

| Category | mini-swe-agent | Sculptor |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Reliability (16%) | 65 | 43 |
| Performance (10%) | pending | pending |
| Schema & documentation (13%) | 58 | 45 |
| Agent ergonomics (13%) | 69 | 50 |
| Security & auth (14%) | 58 | 57 |
| Payments & pricing (10%) | 60 | 60 |
| Task success (10%) | pending | pending |
| Maintenance & community (7%) | 32 | 75 |
| Transparency & trust (7%) | 56 | 57 |

| Fact (where they differ) | mini-swe-agent | Sculptor |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Vendor | SWE-bench team (Princeton and Stanford) | Imbue, Inc. |
| Last release | 2026-07-23 | 2026-11-06 |
| Popularity | 8.6k stars, 4.4M PyPI/wk | none |
| Agent reviews | 3/5 (4) | none |

Why the edge:
- Maintenance & community, Sculptor +43: mini-swe-agent 32 (2.4.6 on PyPI on 2026-07-23, 104 days before this check, and still the newest tag (10). No release in the 90 days to 4 November (0). Main hasn't moved since 3 September (three commits since 23 July, one from pre-commit-ci). Outside fixes were merged within days through July, but no pull request has been merged since #917 (17 August), 77 of the 85 pull requests numbered after it still carry open merge refs on the git remote, and maintainer reply times couldn't be read; the 18 October shields.io counts are struck (5). The Python library ships in the same package as the CLI and is current (10). Dependabot and pre-commit-ci run, and CI workflows exist with their current state unconfirmed (7).); Sculptor 75 (Commits on 6 November 2026 and frequent tagged versions (30). More than three releases in 90 days (20). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent; the README says Imbue can't take many outside contributions yet (0). Current official downloads (15). CI on pull requests (10). 30 + 20 + 0 + 15 + 10 = 75.)
- Reliability, mini-swe-agent +22: mini-swe-agent 65 (Read as a local package, graded on 2.4.6, the release `pip install mini-swe-agent` installs, and still the newest tag on 4 November 2026. One official PyPI package with Python 3.10 or newer stated (20). A pytest workflow runs on every push to main with Podman, bubblewrap and Apptainer installed, 41 test files and Codecov coverage, but GitHub's pages refused this run, so whether main passes is unconfirmed (15). Issue counts and types couldn't be read (the 18 October counts came from shields.io, a third-party copy, and are struck). The git remote shows outside bug fixes merged through 22 July, such as #915, #896 and #886, and nothing merged into main since apart from a pre-commit update on 17 August, while 77 of the 85 pull requests numbered after #917 still carry open merge refs (10). Versions follow semver and v2's breaking changes came with a migration guide, but there's no changelog file and tags carry only a version bump (8). 2.4.6, past 1.0, though the PyPI classifier still says 3 - Alpha (12).); Sculptor 43 (Local software. Desktop downloads for Mac (Apple Silicon), Linux and Linux ARM64 (20). checks.yml and a PR gate run on the repository; pass state not read (15). GitHub issues and pull requests weren't read (GitHub's pages refuse these sessions), so that line is scored absent (0). sculptor-v tags up to v0.49.0, no changelog file (8). 0.x and labelled a research preview (0). 20 + 15 + 0 + 8 + 0 = 43.)
- Agent ergonomics, mini-swe-agent +19: mini-swe-agent 69 (Harness reading of the framework line, scored on what an agent or pipeline driving it has to supply. One bash tool and a short system prompt, with output over 10,000 characters cut to its first and last 5,000, but no compaction of a long history (22). Step, cost and wall-time limits, global call and cost limits by environment variable, and a 30-second timeout per command (18). The trajectory JSON records Submitted, LimitsExceeded, TimeExceeded or RepeatedFormatError, but stdout is human-readable only and these aren't process exit codes (12). Model calls retry ten times with exponential backoff, and the trajectory is saved after every step, but there's no resume and no undo (8). Python bindings only. An unattended `mini` run needs `-y`, `--exit-immediately` and `MSWEA_CONFIGURED`, the last found only in the source (9). No MCP client, ACP or server mode.); Sculptor 50 (Harness reading. Workspaces as isolated copies, review and merge back, and built-in skills (50).)
- Schema & documentation, mini-swe-agent +13: mini-swe-agent 58 (Framework reading. Typed pydantic config classes, typed protocols for agents, models and environments, `py.typed`, a mkdocstrings API reference and a documented trajectory format, but no machine-readable spec for configs or output (15). No llms.txt (/latest/llms.txt and /llms.txt returned 404). The docs are Markdown in the repository, readable raw, though they rely on build-time includes (3). The FAQ and environments page say when to pick mini over SWE-agent and which environment isolates, but the FAQ still says it doesn't use tool calls while the v2 guide says tool calls are now the default (12). Modes are a typed Literal and limits are typed fields, while `model_kwargs` passes free-form to LiteLLM (10). Hello-world and cookbook examples, a model troubleshooting page and a partial list of exit statuses (11). A dated v2 migration guide and kept v1 docs, with release notes only on GitHub, which we couldn't read (7).); Sculptor 45 (Harness reading. A README, specs and agent docs in the repository; no API reference (45).)