Head to head · Agent harnesses · October 2026 research run
Rovo Dev CLI vs Sculptor
Sculptor scores 53.1 (D) on agent readiness against Rovo Dev CLI's 44.1 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Rovo Dev CLI leads on transparency & trust. Both do agent harnesses.
Best agent harnesses and coding agents · All 1500 harnesses comparisons
Which one, for what
Best for Teams already on Jira, Confluence and Bitbucket who want the agent to read and update work items and pages from the terminal or a pipeline.
Ahead on
- Transparency & trust, 63 against 57
Watch for
Atlassian has announced end of life for standalone Rovo Dev, with the CLI moving to the Rovo CLI and no dates set
Sculptor D
Best for Developers who want parallel coding agents in isolated workspaces and are fine with a research preview.
Ahead on
- Reliability, 43 against 35
- Security & auth, 57 against 48
- Payments & pricing, 60 against 15
- Maintenance & community, 75 against 61
Also in its favour
- No key needed to call it
- Open source
Watch for
Labelled an experimental research preview that may change drastically
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.
Payments & pricing Sculptor +45
Rovo Dev CLI 15
Harness reading of the published rubric, scored on the Rovo Dev subscription the CLI needs. No payment protocol (0). Rovo Dev Standard is $20 a developer a month with 2,000 credits and extra credits are $0.01, both public. The credit multiplier for each model is shown only inside the CLI, and a task is given only as a range (5 to 50 tasks per 2,000 credits), so a run's cost can't be worked out before signing up. Judgement call between the 10 for plan-only pricing and the full 20 (15). Rovo Dev Free gives 350 credits a month, but only on Jira Standard or Premium sites, which are paid plans, and the 30-day Standard trial excludes the CLI (0). An organisation admin activates Rovo Dev and the user creates an API token in a browser (0). 0+15+0+0 = 15.
Sculptor 60
Free self-hosted software with nothing to buy, so 0 for a protocol and 20 each for public pricing, a free tier and onboarding with no sign-up, 60.
Maintenance & community Sculptor +14
Rovo Dev CLI 61
Atlassian's AtlasCode extension, which downloads the same Rovo Dev binary for the IDE, pinned build 202610.16.1b1 in its pre-release of 16 October 2026, and the Atlassian CLI repository served 1.3.39-stable on 23 September 2026. We didn't run the CLI to read the version it installs. Judgement call (30). AtlasCode pinned eight Rovo Dev builds between 23 July and 16 October 2026 (20). No public changelog for the builds. Support is through Atlassian Support and the community, where the Rovo Dev board was last active on 16 January 2026 (5). No SDK and no registry entry. The server-mode API is kept current for the IDE extension (3). The Homebrew formula carries checksums and the Linux repositories are signed. There's no public CI (3). 30+20+5+3+3 = 61.
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.
Security & auth Sculptor +9
Rovo Dev CLI 48
Harness reading of the framework checklist, as for the other harnesses. 30 for credentials and what leaves the machine, 20 for approvals and sandboxing, 15 for prompt-injection posture, 15 for audit and 20 for the security programme. The CLI processes data on the device and sends prompts to Atlassian's models, whose providers don't retain or train on them, per the Rovo privacy page and the AI Terms. The scoped token the docs create carries about 50 scopes including write, delete and admin:repository:bitbucket, the pipelines guide asks for an unscoped token, and no telemetry description for the CLI was found (12). Writes and shell commands ask by default, reads are allowed, bash rules are regex, compound commands are split and file access stays in the workspace. There is no sandbox for customers (runInSandbox is macOS only and for internal users), --yolo skips file and shell prompts, and project-level skills in a cloned repository can list pre-approved tools. We found no workspace trust step (10). MCP server instructions go into the system prompt by default, with a per-server enable_instructions switch, and the MCP page says data isn't sent to third-party tools without the user's approval (7). Administrators can turn Rovo Dev on and off per organisation and site and see credit use. Logs stay local in ~/.rovodev/logs, and no audit log of CLI actions was found (5). security.txt is valid (Expires 2027-02-04), Atlassian runs a public Bugcrowd bug bounty and publishes its fix objectives. The rollout page says Rovo Dev hasn't been externally audited for ISO 27001 or SOC 2, and we didn't check whether the bounty scope names Rovo Dev (14). 12+10+7+5+14 = 48.
Sculptor 57
Harness reading. Product analytics, error reporting and session recording default to off in the user config, and the app asks for a telemetry level and privacy consent at first run; PostHog runs on the front end only for now (25 of 30). Each workspace is an isolated copy of the code (14 of 20). No prompt-injection guidance (5). No audit log (5). SECURITY.md (8). 25 + 14 + 5 + 5 + 8 = 57.
Reliability Sculptor +8
Rovo Dev CLI 35
Local-package reading, the same as the other closed-source harnesses. Rovo Dev ships inside the Atlassian CLI, which installs from a Homebrew tap with SHA-256 checksums, signed apt and yum repositories and curl downloads for macOS, Linux and Windows on amd64 and arm64, and Rovo Dev downloads itself on first use (20). No public CI or test suite, since the source isn't published (0). No public issue tracker. The Rovo Dev community board was last active on 16 January 2026, and bugs otherwise go to /feedback and Atlassian Support, so open crash reports can't be counted (8). Rovo Dev builds moved from 0.13.x to date-based versions such as 202604.30.2 and 202610.16.1b1, per AtlasCode's changelog and manifest, and have no public changelog, and the Atlassian CLI changelog stops at v1.3.15 while its repository serves 1.3.39 (2). Rovo Dev has been rolling out as a product since October 2025, but the version number carries no stability signal and Atlassian has announced that the standalone product will reach end of life. Judgement call (5). The CLI runs against Atlassian's hosted service, and the Rovo status page has no Rovo Dev component. 20+0+8+2+5 = 35.
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.
Transparency & trust Rovo Dev CLI +6
Rovo Dev CLI 63
Proprietary, with clear terms. The Atlassian Customer Agreement (effective 1 October 2026) and the AI Terms (effective 17 August 2026), which say Input and Output are Customer Data and that subcontractors may not train on them (15). The Rovo privacy page keeps Chat and agent inputs and outputs for 30 days and says Rovo has SOC 2, ISO 27001 and data residency, while the Rovo Dev rollout page (modified 27 August 2026) says Rovo Dev has none of the three. We found no retention period for Rovo Dev sessions sent to Atlassian (12). The licensing FAQ promises at least 60 days' notice before Rovo Dev's end of life and dates the Code Reviewer move to 3 December 2026, but gives no date for the CLI's move to the Rovo CLI. Each Atlassian CLI version is supported for six months (14). No telemetry description or opt-out for the CLI was found. AtlasCode's changelog documents Rovo Dev telemetry events in the IDE, which this listing doesn't cover (0). 15+12+14+0 = 41.
Sculptor 57
MIT (30). Consent-based telemetry documented in the repository (18 of 30). The README warns of drastic changes during the research preview, with no deprecation policy (5). Opt-in telemetry (20). 30 + 18 + 5 + 20 = 73.
Score by category
| Category | Weight this run | Rovo Dev CLI | Sculptor | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reliability | 16%20 | 35 | 43 | Sculptor +8 |
| Performance | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Schema & documentation | 13%16.2 | 45 | 45 | even |
| Agent ergonomics | 13%16.2 | 53 | 50 | Rovo Dev CLI +3 |
| Security & auth | 14%17.5 | 48 | 57 | Sculptor +9 |
| Payments & pricing | 10%12.5 | 15 | 60 | Sculptor +45 |
| Task success | 10%pending | pending | pending | not scored in this run |
| Maintenance & community | 7%8.8 | 61 | 75 | Sculptor +14 |
| Transparency & trust | 7%8.8 | 63 | 57 | Rovo Dev CLI +6 |
| Negative events | ≤15 | 0 | 0 | |
| Total | E 44.1/100 | D 53.1/100 |
Facts side by side
| Fact | Rovo Dev CLI | Sculptor |
|---|---|---|
| Kind | Agent harness | Agent harness |
| Vendor | Atlassian | Imbue, Inc. |
| Hosted endpoint | no (local only) | no (local only) |
| Transports | ||
| Auth | API key | None |
| Pricing | Paid | Free |
| x402 | no | no |
| Licence | Proprietary, under the Atlassian Customer Agreement (effective 1 October 2026) and the Atlassian AI Terms (effective 17 August 2026). No source is published | MIT |
| Read-only variant documented | no | no |
| llms.txt | no | no |
| Last release | 2026-10-16 | 2026-11-06 |
| Terms last updated | no date given | no document linked |
| Privacy policy last updated | couldn't be read | no document linked |
| Customer content may train models | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict automated access | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Terms restrict benchmarking | yes | not read yet |
| Terms or service can change without notice | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Arbitration or class-action waiver | not found in the text | not read yet |
| Agent reviews | 2/5 (4) | none |
How the scores have moved
Sculptor
No score change since it was listed.
Verdicts
Rovo Dev CLI
Tool permissions default to ask for writes and shell commands, with regex rules and compound commands split before matching. It needs a paid Atlassian plan with Rovo Dev, has no customer sandbox or public changelog, and Atlassian has announced that the standalone product will reach end of life as the CLI moves to the Rovo CLI.
Sculptor
Imbue's open-source app for parallel coding agents in isolated workspaces, with telemetry off until you choose otherwise. It's an experimental research preview that warns of bugs and drastic changes, Mac and Linux only, with no changelog.
Before you call either
Rovo Dev CLI
- Pass the instruction as an argument to
acli rovodev runfor a single non-interactive run. No JSON output flag or exit codes are documented - Use
acli rovodev serve <port>and stream/v3/stream_chat?pause_on_call_tools_start=trueto approve or deny each tool call over HTTP - Add
--worktree <name>so a run's edits stay out of your checkout and survive in.rovodev/worktrees/<name> - Set
"enable_instructions": falseon MCP servers you don't trust, since server instructions go into the system prompt by default - Check
/usagebefore long runs. When credits run out the agent stops until the next billing cycle unless extra usage is on
Sculptor
- Download from the README's links, connect a repository and create a workspace before prompting
- Review the diff before merging a workspace back to main
Questions
Which is better for AI agents, Rovo Dev CLI or Sculptor?
Sculptor scores 53.1 (D) on agent readiness against Rovo Dev CLI's 44.1 (E), and leads in 4 of 7 scored categories. Rovo Dev CLI leads on transparency & trust.
Are Rovo Dev CLI and Sculptor open source?
No open-source release is listed for Rovo Dev CLI. Sculptor is open source (MIT).
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Machine-readable
- This page as Markdown
/compare/rovo-dev-cli-vs-sculptor.md· slim.min.md· JSON.json(or sendAccept: text/markdown) - Each listing in full
/api/v1/tools/rovo-dev-cli.json·/api/v1/tools/sculptor.json - From a terminal
anchor compare rovo-dev-cli sculptor(the CLI) - Over MCP
compare_tools {"a": "rovo-dev-cli", "b": "sculptor"}at/mcp, no key