Astra for Coding
Shares rank 15 of 18 AI coding agents by recommenders
Capable AI coding agent that people use to finish multi-step programming tasks; critics say it overengineers code and costs more in usage.
Capable AI coding agent that people use to finish multi-step programming tasks; critics say it overengineers code and costs more in usage.
23 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 8
- criticize it
- 15
- approval share
- 35%
Recommended in 1 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: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 8 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 1 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
Impressive, capable technology
“It's impressive technology but not revolutionary. Revolutionary technology would have resulted in, you know, a revolution in software quality.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” “Astra is clearly both formidable and imperfect.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” Works through tasks step by step
“after each part it looked and worked well enough”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” “solving every challenge we were having”
Comment from 10 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Overengineers code and tests
“it deciding that the best approach would be to spend 1800 LOC on implementing its own from scratch”
Comment from 16 Oct 2026 in “Postgres 19 delayed after AI reviewers find more bugs than humans can fix” “For more than twice the price of Sol I think most people will take the over engineering.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” “produces totally overengineered tests that are tightly coupled to the implementation”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” Costly in usage and CI minutes
“Astra consumes usage way faster than sol, but the code is worse, at least for my use cases.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” “For more than twice the price of Sol I think most people will take the over engineering.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” “Easy to burn through GH actions minutes if you're not careful orchestrating.”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” Edits code when only asked
“it started to fix issues in my code when I just asked a question about it”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” “Why even offer the edit tool in that case?”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” Conceptual gaps and odd behavior
“I see similar conceptual gaps in coding agents when I work with them”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “For AI leaders Doom is a form of hype” “apparently Astra can’t tell the difference”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?” “agree with consensus that Astra is weird”
Comment from 12 Sep 2026 in “Astra for Coding: Why Are We Doing This Again?”
Other AI coding agents people recommend
The four most recommended other AI 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Claude Code | 4,522 | 3,788 | 54% | 13 | 6 mo417 owners | — |
| OpenAI Codex | 2,474 | 1,289 | 66% | 13 | 3 mo165 owners | — |
| OpenCode | 1,060 | 572 | 65% | 13 | 2 mo41 owners | — |
| Gemini CLI | 172 | 321 | 35% | 12 | 3 mo9 owners | — |
| Astra for CodingThis page | 8 | 15 | 35% | 1 | — | — |
What people said
All 23 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“it deciding that the best approach would be to spend 1800 LOC on implementing its own from scratch”
“I see similar conceptual gaps in coding agents when I work with them”
“agree with consensus that Astra is weird”
“after each part it looked and worked well enough”
“It can’t one shot a giant project. Not reliably.”
“seem to take this idea to the extreme causing some unwanted side-effects”
“I did it in twenty minutes rather than pay for expedited shipping”
“it started to fix issues in my code when I just asked a question about it”
“I had good luck with Kevin Lin's tip for Astra: "Can you radically simplify the implementation?"”
“Astra is clearly both formidable and imperfect.”
“now you need to unravel the Python script before you can understand what was actually changed”
“Programmers are paid less to work more.”
“Easy to burn through GH actions minutes if you're not careful orchestrating.”
“Astra consumes usage way faster than sol, but the code is worse, at least for my use cases.”
“It's impressive technology but not revolutionary. Revolutionary technology would have resulted in, you know, a revolution in software quality.”
“I found it to be less annoying in that regard then sol.”
“produces totally overengineered tests that are tightly coupled to the implementation”
“apparently Astra can’t tell the difference”
“This matches my experience with Astra so far too.”
“It makes for a catastrophically boring game.”
“Why even offer the edit tool in that case?”
“For more than twice the price of Sol I think most people will take the over engineering.”
“solving every challenge we were having”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.