agent-shell
Hacker ApprovedShares rank 2 of 24 Emacs packages by recommenders
Free Emacs package that runs AI coding agents like Claude Code inside Emacs; fans like its keyboard-driven, customizable feel. Some critics find it behind the official Claude terminal interface.
Free Emacs package that runs AI coding agents like Claude Code inside Emacs; fans like its keyboard-driven, customizable feel. Some critics find it behind the official Claude terminal interface.
31 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 25
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 81%
Recommended in 11 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 25 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 4.2 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 11 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, 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
Native experience inside Emacs
“Emacs makes for excellent Agent harness. With agent-shell, this is the only UI I use for working with agents.”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “DeepSeek Harness Desktop for macOS and Windows” “Even Emacs nuts like me can use agents natively from our beloved editor”
Comment from 20 Dec 2025 in “Graphite is joining Cursor” “Agent-shell.el for the CLI experience that's integrated with emacs”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving” - Comment from 15 Jun 2026 in “Even More Batteries Included with Emacs”
- Comment from 20 Jan 2026 in “I was a top 0.01% Cursor user. Here's why I switched to Claude Code 2.0”
Praised as favorite AI coding interface
“Can't say enough good things about agent-shell.el! Xenodium has done amazing work there.”
Comment from 27 Aug 2026 in “Emacs 31: An unofficial guide to Markdown-ts-mode” “To date, agent-shell.el is my favorite AI coding experience.”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Emacs Turns 50” “agent-shell is my favorite LLM interface bar none”
Comment from 27 Aug 2026 in “Emacs 31: An unofficial guide to Markdown-ts-mode” - Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “Emacs 31 Is Around the Corner: The Changes I'm Daily Driving”
Supports many agents, including Claude
“I also strongly recommend agent-shell. I use it for all my work with Claude.”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Emacs Turns 50” “Install agent-shell to run Claude Code inside Emacs”
Comment from 14 Mar 2026 in “Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI” “It handles quite a few other agents, too.”
Comment from 29 Apr 2026 in “I have officially retired from Emacs” Customizable with Emacs Lisp
“I'm a huge fan of agent-shell, too. It keeps getting better and better, and it's infinitely customizable”
Comment from 27 Aug 2026 in “Emacs 31: An unofficial guide to Markdown-ts-mode” “eca and agent-shell are ordinary elisp, with hooks, advising, keymaps”
Comment from 29 Oct 2026 in “Emacs Turns 50”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Missing features compared with terminal
“it's currently broken with Claude for me and is way behind the claude TUI”
Comment from 30 Jul 2026 in “Mitchellh starts a new company: Superlogical” “Without /resume or /rewind, it's unusable.”
Comment from 14 Mar 2026 in “Emacs and Vim in the Age of AI” Loose fit with Emacs
“I kind of wish it integrated more tightly”
Comment from 25 Feb 2026 in “Pi – a minimal terminal coding harness” “Neither seems to really fit with emacs.”
Comment from 28 Oct 2026 in “Emacs Turns 50”
Other Emacs packages people recommend
The four most recommended other Emacs packages, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Evil mode for Emacs | 39 | 7 | 85% | 11 | — | Approved |
| agent-shellThis page | 25 | 6 | 81% | 11 | — | Approved |
| TRAMP for Emacs | 25 | 10 | 71% | 8 | — | Approved |
| gptel | 20 | 1 | 95% | 12 | — | Approved |
| SLIME | 19 | 2 | 90% | 11 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 46 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“eca and agent-shell are ordinary elisp, with hooks, advising, keymaps”
“I also strongly recommend agent-shell. I use it for all my work with Claude.”
“Neither seems to really fit with emacs.”
“I love the ecosystem that's being created there”
“That drove me to agent-shell which requires a cli but works.”
“To date, agent-shell.el is my favorite AI coding experience.”
“Just ask Claude or whatever to hook up gptel and eca (or agent-shell).”
“Emacs makes for excellent Agent harness. With agent-shell, this is the only UI I use for working with agents.”
“agent-shell is my favorite LLM interface bar none”
“The most popular ways for agent stuff seems to be”
“I'm a huge fan of agent-shell, too. It keeps getting better and better, and it's infinitely customizable”
“It definitely feels like the right way to do things, but when I tried it it had a couple of show-stopper limitations and a show-stopper bug”
“Can't say enough good things about agent-shell.el! Xenodium has done amazing work there.”
“You should give https://github.com/xenodium/agent-shell and https://github.com/dakra/ghostel a shot.”
“I've tried it with cursor and it works okay.”
“it's fast and text/keyboard-driven like a terminal, also renders inline images, markdown and tables like a desktop app”
“it's currently broken with Claude for me and is way behind the claude TUI”
“bringing a fresh wind into the ecosystem”
“it works very well even if I have 6 projects open or whatever”
“Agent-shell.el for the CLI experience that's integrated with emacs”
“I use agent-shell.el and it is incredible”
“It makes the whole experience great.”
“it makes integrating LLMs into your standard emacs flows ezpz”
“at this point at the very least i can keep my workflows and my UI all the same”
“It handles quite a few other agents, too.”
“agent-shell (and chatgpt-shell, which is LLM-agnostic despite the name) are great packages”
“I do all my LLM-assisted work inside Emacs using Agent Shell and Emacs skills”
“Without /resume or /rewind, it's unusable.”
“agentshell is a nice way to chat with LLMs. Well worth setting up.”
“I love it and I don't even care that much for agents (yet)”
“I'm happy with how the integration is shaping up, enabling me to have my cake and eat it too (Emacs + AI agents).”
“Install agent-shell to run Claude Code inside Emacs”
“allows for some very cool integrations”
“I kind of wish it integrated more tightly”
“it likely has richer interaction by now (specially the compose interface)”
“I like that agent-shell just uses comint instead of a full vterm”
“It's helped me out lot of times because I can say 'look at the last transcript here'.”
“I get a native experience.”
“Even Emacs nuts like me can use agents natively from our beloved editor”
“I’ve started using `xenodium/agent-shell` more.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.