Maki
Hacker ApprovedRanked 7 of 41 coding agents by recommenders
Recommended as a fast, lightweight Rust terminal coding agent that runs well on small servers and parses shell permissions; the most common caveat is its curl-to-shell install script.
Recommended as a fast, lightweight Rust terminal coding agent that runs well on small servers and parses shell permissions; the most common caveat is its curl-to-shell install script.
34 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 30
- criticize it
- 4
- approval share
- 88%
Recommended in 8 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 30 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 7.5 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 8 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
Fast, lightweight Rust build
“Love using maki on 500mb and 1gb ram tiny vps's where opencode sometimes could go OOM.”
Comment from 20 Aug 2026 in “fx :Tiny, open, native coding agent.” “you can use maki.sh (written in rust) as compared to opencode/claude-code etc.”
Comment from 25 Jul 2026 in “Fly.io CEO Kurt Mackey is stepping down” “But I like it, code processing is freaking fast.”
Comment from 19 Jun 2026 in “The Token Compression Illusion: Why I'm Skeptical of RTK” - Comment from 24 Jul 2026 in “Ask HN: Any Good Pi.dev Setups?”
- Comment from 25 Oct 2026 in “OpenAI and Anthropic cut their LLM prices by up to 80% within a few months. Why?”
- Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Stop Using OpenCode”
Preferred over OpenCode and pi
“Maki is awesome. Thanks! I'm using it on my X220 and it flies in comparison to OpenCode et al.”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “The Token Compression Illusion: Why I'm Skeptical of RTK” “I already found maki which...seems to do the exact same job pi did for me”
Comment from 17 Aug 2026 in “Pi coding agent: config folder is out of place on Linux” “I also have become a maki convert and I really like it”
Comment from 18 Jun 2026 in “The Token Compression Illusion: Why I'm Skeptical of RTK” - Comment from 6 Sep 2026 in “Recreating Minecraft Is Not a Benchmark”
Parses bash permissions safely
“Maki uses tree-sitter to parse the bash command and figure out the permissions requested are git * and rm *.”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Stop Using OpenCode” “Well done for actually parsing the shell commands the LLM wants to execute”
Comment from 11 Apr 2026 in “Maki – the efficient coder (AI agent)” “The bash permission parsing is what sold me.”
Comment from 9 Apr 2026 in “Show HN: Maki – The efficient terminal coding agent” Low cost with cheap models
“Thanks for harnesses like maki the cost is lower compared to OpenCode or Cursor.”
Comment from 20 Jul 2026 in “Kimi K3, Qwen 3.8, and Anthropic's (Potential) Unravelling” “with 100% ds4-flash it's extremely powerful and super cheap”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Awkward curl-to-shell install
“I just wish it wouldn't ask me to pipe an install script directly to shell to install.”
Comment from 5 Aug 2026 in “Pi's Minimalism Is Its Advantage” “it was still a bit of an hassle to install maki.sh”
Comment from 1 Oct 2026 in “Show HN: Autobox – Make your agents sandbox themselves” “maki you curl an install script into bash”
Comment from 11 Sep 2026 in “Nine coding harnesses vs. your laptop” Terminal copy-paste limitations
“copy-paste is broken (no middle-click paste, or copy to PRIMARY”
Comment from 13 Oct 2026 in “Codex CLI installs a persistent, self-updating background daemon by default” “terminal have limitations”
Comment from 18 Sep 2026 in “Inside ZCode: Silently uploading your Git history to the cloud”
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 |
| MakiThis page | 30 | 4 | 88% | 8 | — | Approved |
What people said
40 of the 58 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“It's built in Rust and is absolutely amazing.”
“copy-paste is broken (no middle-click paste, or copy to PRIMARY”
“From my previous to harnesses, pi and maki, neither did both.”
“I recently changed to Maki and have been reasonably satisfied so far.”
“it was still a bit of an hassle to install maki.sh”
“has some interesting token-saving mechanisms”
“888 tests passing in CI across Python 3.10 to 3.13”
“terminal have limitations”
“maki you curl an install script into bash”
“I've made https://maki.sh for use cases such as this”
“sometimes omp/opencode but mostly maki”
“It is very capable and has a sane plugin system via Lua.”
“Love using maki on 500mb and 1gb ram tiny vps's where opencode sometimes could go OOM.”
“the ui is snappy and pretty much exactly what i want”
“think it's a really well made piece of software”
“I already found maki which...seems to do the exact same job pi did for me”
“Takes a reasonable time to build on my X220, but on a modern computer it is plenty fast.”
“I just wish it wouldn't ask me to pipe an install script directly to shell to install.”
“with 100% ds4-flash it's extremely powerful and super cheap”
“you can use maki.sh (written in rust) as compared to opencode/claude-code etc.”
“especially so on my VPS's as its written in rust”
“Thanks for harnesses like maki the cost is lower compared to OpenCode or Cursor.”
“seems promising and it's so much lighter”
“Maki uses tree-sitter to parse the bash command and figure out the permissions requested are git * and rm *.”
“I have zero quality issues on Z.ai Coding Plan and maki.sh as the coding agent”
“doesn't want me to ask too many questions and simply spin me up something”
“Use OpenCode, pi.dev, or maki.sh with any of the open models.”
“I love the aesthetics and how colorful it is!”
“But I like it, code processing is freaking fast.”
“Looks very cool. I would like to try it”
“I also have become a maki convert and I really like it”
“Maki is awesome. Thanks! I'm using it on my X220 and it flies in comparison to OpenCode et al.”
“I ran a bunch of benchmarks and there are proven ways to reduce tokens while achieving the same results”
“basically all of what the author wrote there is implemented”
“a non vibe designed efficient Rust TUI coding agent made by yours truly”
“Well done for actually parsing the shell commands the LLM wants to execute”
“Giving each one its own window so you can jump in and course-correct without blowing up the whole run”
“The bash permission parsing is what sold me.”
“It will 100% be better than the 500k lines of code junk that is CC.”
“It's great to know that this works well too.”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.