The best terminal coding agents, according to hackers
5 terminal coding agents recommended in Hacker News comments over the past year, ranked by how many separate people recommend each one.
- Most recommendedGitHub Copilot CLI56 people recommend it
- Least regretCursor CLI17 recommend, 5 criticize
- Free and lovedCodeWhale7 people recommend it
All terminal coding agents
- GitHub Copilot CLIPeople recommend it as a capable terminal coding agent, often close to Claude Code, and it works well with a Copilot plan. Critics mention weaker harness, slowness and memory leaks.56recommend
- Cursor CLIDevelopers recommend it as a capable terminal agent that matches mainstream rivals, with good limits for $20 a month and easy model switching.17recommend
- CodeWhalePeople recommend it as an affordable, slick front end for DeepSeek models, tuned for DeepSeek's caching so usage stays cheap.7recommend
- AgenttyRecommended for running several coding agent sessions in parallel, with git handling built in. One critic raised a risk of account bans from its Claude OAuth use.7recommend
- OSS AgentFree open-source terminal coding agent praised for strong benchmark results and for feeling more effective and accurate. One reported caveat: .gitignore handling differs from its documentation.6recommend