Shelley

What hackers pick instead

• GitHub CopilotRecommended as a cheap way to use many AI models with smooth VS Code integration and autocompletion, though critics resent tightening request limits, pricing changes and ads in PRs.571recommend
• oh-my-piA batteries-included fork of the Pi coding harness with sensible defaults, easy provider switching and built-in search and context tools, though critics find it bloated and token-hungry.104recommend
• Grok Build CLIFast, smooth terminal coding agent that people find capable and recommend; critics say it uploads whole directories, including secrets, to xAI.66recommend
• DeepSeek HarnessRecommended as an open-source agent harness with good observability, a plugin system and a desktop app. Critics mostly question its plugin design and worry about data collection.63recommend
• Claude Code VS Code extensionBrings Claude Code into VS Code for reviewing and editing code in a GUI. Main caveat: a lookalike extension on the Cursor marketplace reportedly contained malware.31recommend

Every quote

The 28 most detailed of 29 comments. Each links to the original.

1. Shelley wrote all the code. It was also quite good at launching a browser, seeing the site, scrolling & navigating

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Shelley: A Coding Agent for Exe.dev”

2. Shelley is a great feature and must have well-designed system prompts and tools for testing the website built-in.

   Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Exe.dev/”

3. I can refer to a previous conversation and the agent can easily do a Sqlite query to see what happened.

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ex-GitHub CEO Launches a New Developer Platform for AI Agents”

4. Shelley is very good: running everything in a VM and using a web browser as your UI

   Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “GLM-5.3: Frontier Coding with Emergent Cyber Capabilities”

5. the agent Shelley on exe can search past convos when promoted too for continuation

   Recommends · Feb 2026 · in “Ask HN: Has anyone achieved recursive self-improvement with agentic tools?”

6. On exe.dev the agent (Shelley) runs in a Linux VM, which is the security boundary.

   Mixed · May 2026 · in “The agent harness belongs outside the sandbox”

7. already uses sqlite to store converians is searchable from the UI as well

   Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Show HN: ctx – Search the coding agent history already on your machine”

8. works fine in a web browser on my laptop, tablet, and phone

   Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “All your agents are going async”

9. quite adequate for using from the phone

   Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Claude Code On-the-Go”

10. I would suggest trying Shelley, the little agent we have in exe.dev.

    Recommends · Dec 2025 · in “Exe.dev/”

11. Great example of clean code and very effective tooling.

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Go is the best language for agents”

12. There is no lock-in. Conversations are not precious.

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “The Session You Cannot take with you”

13. it facilitates much of what you describe by default

    Recommends · Mar 2026 · in “Get Shit Done: A Meta-Prompting, Context Engineering and Spec-Driven Dev System”

14. exe.dev has pretty much solved this with Shelley

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “Show HN: Grov – Multiplayer for AI Coding Agents (Open Source)”

15. covers the spectrum of crazy black box to simple

    Recommends · Jul 2026 · in “Opinionated and Easy Pi.dev Configuration”

16. full Go-based coding agent with LLM gateway.

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Show HN: GoModel – an open-source AI gateway in Go; 44x lighter than LiteLLM”

17. Got rid of openhands in favor of Shelley

    Recommends · Jan 2026 · in “ChatGPT Containers can now run bash, pip/npm install packages and download files”

18. their Shelley web agent is pretty great

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Ask HN: What is your (AI) dev tech stack / workflow? (June 2026)”

19. I haven't noticed any deterioration

    Recommends · Apr 2026 · in “Anthropic silently downgraded cache TTL from 1h → 5M on March 6th”

20. Shelley of course is just native

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “Ask HN: What is your (AI) dev tech stack / workflow? (June 2026)”

21. I quite like exe.dev and Shelley

    Recommends · Jun 2026 · in “SpaceX to buy Cursor AI coding agent operator Anysphere for $60B”

22. it got everything up and running

    Recommends · May 2026 · in “Shelley: Mobile-friendly, web-based, multi-modal, single-user coding agent”

23. Shelley Web Agent ready to go

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “AI coding startup Lovable raised $400M at $13.3B valuation up from $6.6B in 2025”

24. I love the Shelley Web Agent

    Recommends · Aug 2026 · in “AI coding startup Lovable raised $400M at $13.3B valuation up from $6.6B in 2025”

25. Shelley is a fantastic agent

    Recommends · Sep 2026 · in “Claude Opus 5.5”

26. These are nice declarative statements but have almost no meaningful substance.

    Criticizes · Apr 2026 · in “I Am Building a Cloud”

27. shelley agent seems to be install, but it always shows isn't running.

    Criticizes · Dec 2025 · in “Exe.dev/”

28. i am not going to checkout your shitty vibecoded project

    Criticizes · Mar 2026 · in “Get Shit Done: A Meta-Prompting, Context Engineering and Spec-Driven Dev System”