Autolith
Shares rank 20 of 41 coding agents by recommenders
A free coding agent built in Common Lisp that runs inside a live Lisp image, letting the agent inspect and modify running code and its own source.
A free coding agent built in Common Lisp that runs inside a live Lisp image, letting the agent inspect and modify running code and its own source.
14 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 14
- criticize it
- 0
- approval share
- 100%
Recommended in 3 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: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 14 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- Nobody criticizes itNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 3 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
Agent works inside a live Lisp image
“The benefit of having the agent directly in the image like with Autolith here is that it can directly inspect all defined symbols”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “Autolith: A programming agent with a live runtime” “I've had success loading Lisp programs into Autolith and letting it poke at them from the inside”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “Autolith: A programming agent with a live runtime” Agent can read and update its own code
“I've observed it modify itself to disassemble binaries in search of answers”
Comment from 2 Oct 2026 in “DeepSeek Harness Desktop for macOS and Windows” “autolith is very capable at reading and updating it's own code”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “Autolith: A programming agent with a live runtime” Written in Common Lisp, suits LLMs
“Autolith is great with LLMs exactly because it's written in Common Lisp”
Comment from 6 Oct 2026 in “Why Common Lisp is now the best programming language” “here's an interesting tool to use CL with LLMs”
Comment from 13 Aug 2026 in “Why vibe code in Common Lisp?” Lisp environment is enjoyable to use
“The freedom of having a lisp machine is, to me, much more enjoyable than trying to maintain Typescript”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Pi 1.0” “I made Autolith in Common Lisp because I like Lisp”
Comment from 22 Aug 2026 in “Autolith: A programming agent with a live runtime” “This is cool. Love that you used lisp here.”
Comment from 23 Aug 2026 in “Autolith: A programming agent with a live runtime”
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 |
| AutolithThis page | 14 | 0 | 100% | 3 | — | — |
What people said
18 of the 22 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I'm the author and I share the same philosophy”
“Autolith is great with LLMs exactly because it's written in Common Lisp”
“I've observed it modify itself to disassemble binaries in search of answers”
“The freedom of having a lisp machine is, to me, much more enjoyable than trying to maintain Typescript”
“This is cool. Love that you used lisp here.”
“I've had success loading Lisp programs into Autolith and letting it poke at them from the inside”
“changes submitted to Autolith developed by Autolith are by far the highest quality”
“This idea almost gets us there.”
“autolith is very capable at reading and updating it's own code”
“it's been very useful for this”
“the harness detects Lisp file edits (CL, Scheme, Clojure) and gives hints when the edits lead to unbalanced files”
“very cool, thanks for making this!”
“I made Autolith in Common Lisp because I like Lisp”
“if you'd like to try Autolith, I am happy to help with issues/questions on our Zulip”
“This is really interesting.”
“The benefit of having the agent directly in the image like with Autolith here is that it can directly inspect all defined symbols”
“here's an interesting tool to use CL with LLMs”
“Not mine, but interesting.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.