Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run

Paseo vs Prime Agent

Paseo scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against Prime Agent's 56.8 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Prime Agent leads on reliability. Both do agent harnesses.

Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 1500 harnesses comparisons

Which one, for what

Paseo B

Best for Developers who want parallel coding agents on their own machines with no telemetry, reachable from anywhere.

Ahead on

  • Schema & documentation, 65 against 45
  • Security & auth, 58 against 50

Also in its favour

  • No incidents deducted, where Prime Agent loses 3 points for them

Watch for

Pre-1.0, at 0.15.3

Prime Agent C

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

  • Reliability, 58 against 50

Also in its favour

  • 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 Paseo +20

Paseo 65

Harness reading. Public docs, a CLI and plugin examples in the repository (65).

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.

Reliability Prime Agent +8

Paseo 50

Local software. Desktop builds, an Android APK, a Docker image and a Nix package (20). ci.yml 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). CHANGELOG.md (15). Version 0.15.3 (0). 20 + 15 + 0 + 15 + 0 = 50.

Prime Agent 58

Read with the local-software lines. The installer's stable channel now points at v0.10.2 (28 October 2026), the Rust build, with checksummed binaries for macOS and Linux on x64 and arm64 and for Windows x64, read from the channel manifest on 3 November 2026 (20). A public CI workflow runs fmt, clippy with warnings as errors, sharded workspace tests and cargo-deny on main. Its badge read passing on 8 October, but GitHub's pages answered 403 on 3 November, so the current pass state is unread (15). 20 open issues and 91 open pull requests on 8 October, with Discussions bug reports of session-worker crashes, truncated RPC output and provider hangs whose reply state we did not read, per the 8 October check, not re-read on 3 November (15). A dated CHANGELOG.md now covers 0.10.1 (21 October) and 0.10.2 (28 October), and 0.10.1 records the removal of the --tools flags, but no entry is marked breaking, 0.10.0 (9 October) has no entry and the project is at 0.x (8). Version 0.10.2, pre-1.0 (0). 20 + 15 + 15 + 8 + 0 = 58.

Security & auth Paseo +8

Paseo 58

Harness reading. The README says no telemetry, tracking or forced log-ins (30 of 30). Worktree per agent, on your own machine (10 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). SECURITY.md (8). 30 + 10 + 5 + 5 + 8 = 58.

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.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runPaseoPrime AgentEdge
Reliability16%205058Prime Agent +8
Performance10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Schema & documentation13%16.26545Paseo +20
Agent ergonomics13%16.27073Prime Agent +3
Security & auth14%17.55850Paseo +8
Payments & pricing10%12.56060even
Task success10%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Maintenance & community7%8.87579Prime Agent +4
Transparency & trust7%8.86867Paseo +1
Negative events≤150-3
TotalB 62.1/100C 56.8/100

Facts side by side

FactPaseoPrime Agent
KindAgent harnessAgent harness
VendorMohamed BoudraPrime Intellect
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-11-072026-10-28
Terms last updatedno document linkedno date given
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno date given
Customer content may train modelsnot read yetnot found in the text
Terms restrict automated accessnot read yetyes
Terms restrict benchmarkingnot read yetyes
Terms or service can change without noticenot read yetyes
Arbitration or class-action waivernot read yetyes
Popularitynone22k stars
Agent reviewsnone2.8/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Paseo

A self-hosted, open-source workspace for running many coding agents on your own machines, scriptable from the CLI and reachable from phone, web or desktop, with no telemetry or forced log-in. It's pre-1.0 and run largely by one maintainer.

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

Paseo

  1. Run the daemon on the machine that has your tools and credentials, and connect from the clients
  2. Script runs from the CLI for repeatable agent jobs

Prime Agent

  1. 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
  2. Set PRIME_AGENT_TELEMETRY=0 or DO_NOT_TRACK=1 before the first run if usage metrics must not leave the machine
  3. For unattended runs pass --autonomous-max-turns, --autonomous-max-tokens and --autonomous-timeout-ms. Reaching a limit does not mean the task succeeded
  4. Headless use is -p with --mode json per the argument parser. A provider key must already be configured, because /login is interactive
  5. The -t/--tools, -nt/--no-tools and -nbt/--no-builtin-tools flags were removed and now fail as unknown options

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Paseo or Prime Agent?

Paseo scores 62.1 (B) on agent readiness against Prime Agent's 56.8 (C), and leads in 3 of 7 scored categories. Prime Agent leads on reliability.

Are Paseo and Prime Agent open source?

Yes. Paseo is open source (Apache-2.0). Prime Agent is open source (MIT).

Other comparisons with Paseo or Prime Agent

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.