3code
Shares rank 39 of 41 coding agents by recommenders
A free, cross-platform coding agent written in Nim and built for token efficiency, which people say uses fewer tokens than Claude Code.
A free, cross-platform coding agent written in Nim and built for token efficiency, which people say uses fewer tokens than Claude Code.
5 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: not recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Low token use, tested
“Unixy scrollback but cross plaform. Tested for token efficiency.”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Pi 1.0” “which is written in Nim and focuses on token efficiency”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Codex CLI installs a persistent, self-updating background daemon by default” “batteries included and tested for token consumption”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Pi 1.0” - Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Pi 1.0”
Cross platform and tiny
“Unixy scrollback but cross plaform. Tested for token efficiency.”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “Pi 1.0” “it's cross platform, it's tiny and it works!”
Comment from 20 Jun 2026 in “3code, the economical coding agent [video]”
Other coding agents people recommend
The four most recommended other coding agents, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GitHub Copilot | 571 | 993 | 37% | 12 | 1 yr46 owners | — |
| oh-my-pi | 104 | 28 | 79% | 9 | 2 mo5 owners | Approved |
| Grok Build CLI | 66 | 114 | 37% | 6 | — | — |
| DeepSeek Harness | 63 | 28 | 69% | 4 | 1 mo5 owners | Approved |
| 3codeThis page | 5 | 0 | 100% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
All 9 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“Looks like exactly the agent I might have been looking for.”
“code printed in the conversation has | markers in every line, and is thus uncopyable in practice”
“which is written in Nim and focuses on token efficiency”
“I believe software can be done- with incremental improvement and keeping the foundation, like vim.”
“my own 3code used 4x fewer tokens than Claude Code”
“Unixy scrollback but cross plaform. Tested for token efficiency.”
“batteries included and tested for token consumption”
“it's cross platform, it's tiny and it works!”
“It's also a pleasure to work with.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.